The Usability (or Not) of Refactoring Tools

Eilertsen, Anna Maria; Murphy, Gail C.

doi:10.1109/saner50967.2021.00030

Cited by 10 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 26 publications

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“…In addition to providing extensive and innovative refactoring functionality in their tools/IDEs, vendors must ensure that their products also exhibit an optimal user experience. Usability and trustworthiness are an essential part of refactoring tool adoption and are among the reasons for the lack of usage [71,52]. Our study corroborates these findings where we observe developers requiring help to configure tools or finding a tool for a specific purpose.…”

Section: Automatic Synchronization Between Project Artifactssupporting

confidence: 87%

“…Additionally, developers seek advice for recommendations for tools/IDEs for refactoring specific programming languages or for configuring tools (such as disabling/enabling specific IDE refactoring features). In their study of the usability of refactoring tools, Eilertsen and Murphy [52] highlight the need for tools to support developers in guiding tools in the execution of refactoring operations. This corroborates our findings, where most questions around tool usage are specific to a developer's source code.…”

Section: Tools and Idesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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How Do I Refactor This? An Empirical Study on Refactoring Trends and Topics in Stack Overflow

Peruma,

Simmons,

AlOmar

et al. 2021

Preprint

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An essential part of software maintenance and evolution, refactoring is performed by developers, regardless of technology or domain, to improve the internal quality of the system, and reduce its technical debt. However, choosing the appropriate refactoring strategy is not always straightforward, resulting in developers seeking assistance. Although research in refactoring is well-established, with several studies altering between the detection of refactoring opportunities and the recommendation of appropriate code changes, little is known about their adoption in practice. Analyzing the perception of developers is critical to understand better what developers consider to be problematic in their code and how they handle it. Additionally, there is a need for bridging the gap between refactoring, as research, and its adoption in practice, by extracting common refactoring intents that are more suitable for what developers face in reality.In this study, we analyze refactoring discussions on Stack Overflow through a series of quantitative and qualitative experiments. Our results show that Stack Overflow is utilized by a diverse set of developers for refactoring assistance for a variety of technologies. Our observations show five areas that developers typically require help with refactoring-Code Optimization, Tools and IDEs, Architecture and Design Patterns, Unit Testing, and Database. We envision our findings better bridge the support between traditional (or academic) aspects of refactoring and their real-world applicability, including better tool support.

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Section: Automatic Synchronization Between Project Artifactssupporting

confidence: 87%

Section: Tools and Idesmentioning

confidence: 99%

How Do I Refactor This? An Empirical Study on Refactoring Trends and Topics in Stack Overflow

Peruma,

Simmons,

AlOmar

et al. 2021

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Our earlier paper identifies this as one of four usability themes. 37 However, our findings echoes a theoretical perspective from Fleming et al, who employed information foraging theory in a theoretical analysis of refactoring tools used for smell removal. 49 Our findings provide empirical evidence for Fleming et al's prediction that, in cases where tools may have difficulty accurately approximating the human judgment required to determine whether individual code changes are appropriate, the cost of using automation increases.…”

Section: Triessupporting

confidence: 82%

“…We previously argued for the utility of lab studies with practitioners to investigate this facet of refactoring tools 36 . We later introduced a theory of refactoring tool usability 37 . We developed this theory by investigating the transcripts from the study reported in this paper from the perspective of usability as defined by the ISO 9241‐11 38 .…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…36 We later introduced a theory of refactoring tool usability. 37 We developed this theory by investigating the transcripts from the study reported in this paper from the perspective of usability as defined by the ISO 9241-11. 38 The ISO definition focuses on qualities of the developer's experience of the human-computer interaction that occurs when they use a refactoring tool, such as satisfaction.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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A study of refactorings during software change tasks

Eilertsen

Murphy

2021

J Software Evolu Process

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Developers frequently undertake software change tasks that could be partially or fully automated by refactoring tools. As has been reported by others, all too often, these refactoring steps are instead performed manually by developers. These missed opportunities are referred to as occasions of disuse of refactoring tools. We perform an observational study in which 17 developers with professional experience attempt to solve three change tasks with steps amenable to the use of refactoring tools. We found that the strategies developers use to approach these tasks shape their workflow, which, in turn, shape the opportunities for refactoring tool use. We report on a number of findings about developer strategies, demonstrating the difficulty of aligning the kind of refactoring steps that emerge during a change task based on the strategy with the tools available. We also report on findings about refactoring tools, such as the difficulties developers face in controlling the scope of application of the tools. Our findings can help inform the designers of refactoring tools.

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Model‐based source code refactoring with interaction and visual cues

Hemati Moghadam,

Ó Cinnéide,

Sardarian

et al. 2023

J Software Evolu Process

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Refactoring source code involves the developer in a myriad of program detail that can obscure the design changes that they actually wish to bring about. On the other hand, refactoring a UML model of the code makes it easier to focus on the program design, but the burdensome task of applying the refactorings to the source code is left to the developer. In an attempt to obtain the advantages of both approaches, we propose a refactoring approach where the interaction with the developer takes place at the model level, but the actual refactoring occurs on the source code itself. We call this approach model‐based source code refactoring and implement it in this paper using two tools: (1) Design‐Imp enables the developer to use interactive search‐based design exploration to create a UML‐based desired design from an initial design extracted from the source code. It also provides visual cues to improve developer comprehension during the design‐level refactoring process and to help the developer to discern between promising and poor refactoring solutions. (2) Code‐Imp then refactors the original source so that it has the same functional behavior as the original program, and a design close to the one produced in the design exploration phase, that is, a design that has been confirmed as “desirable” by the developer. We evaluated our approach involving interaction and visual cues with industrial developers refactoring three Java projects, comparing it with an approach using interaction without visual cues and a fully automated approach. The results show that our approach yields refactoring sequences that are more acceptable both to the individual developer and to a set of independent expert refactoring evaluators. Furthermore, our approach removed more code smells and was evaluated very positively by the experiment participants.

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The Usability (or Not) of Refactoring Tools

Cited by 10 publications

References 26 publications

How Do I Refactor This? An Empirical Study on Refactoring Trends and Topics in Stack Overflow

How Do I Refactor This? An Empirical Study on Refactoring Trends and Topics in Stack Overflow

A study of refactorings during software change tasks

Model‐based source code refactoring with interaction and visual cues

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