Unveiling Exception Handling Guidelines Adopted by Java Developers

Abstract

Despite being an old language feature, Java exception handling code is one of the least understood parts of many systems. Several studies have analyzed the characteristics of exception handling code, trying to identify common practices or even link such practices to software bugs. Few works, however, have investigated exception handling issues from the point of view of developers. None of the works have focused on discovering exception handling guidelines adopted by current systemswhich are likely to be a driver of common practices. In this work, we conducted a qualitative study based on semi-structured interviews and a survey whose goal was to investigate the guidelines that are (or should be) followed by developers in their projects. Initially, we conducted semi-structured interviews with seven experienced developers, which were used to inform the design of a survey targeting a broader group of Java developers (i.e., a group of active Java developers from topstarred projects on GitHub). We emailed 863 developers and received 98 valid answers. The study shows that exception handling guidelines usually exist (70%) and are usually implicit and undocumented (54%). Our study identifies 48 exception handling guidelines related to seven different categories. We also investigated how such guidelines are disseminated to the project team and how compliance between code and guidelines is verified; we could observe that according to more than half of respondents the guidelines are both disseminated and verified through code inspection or code review. Our findings provide software development teams with a means to improve exception handling guidelines based on insights from the state of practice of 87 software projects.

A Reflection on “An Exploratory Study on Exception Handling Bugs in Java Programs”

“…Researchers acknowledge this. Even though exception handling cannot be considered a popular research topic, there is a steady stream of publications on the topic in major Software Engineering research venues [40], [30], [47], [37], [48], [17]. In this paper, we re-examined a paper that investigated the nature, prevalence, and perceptions about bugs related to exception handling usage.…”

“…Our categorization of exception handling bugs and their causes has been (partially) used in five different studies [20], [15], [26], [33], [18] The survey we conducted in our article also served as a basis for surveys by de Sousa [13], [34]. Finally, we found 15 papers addressing the five themes for future work that our paper discussed [23], [25], [26], [27], [35], [17], [36], [33], [29], [37], [30], [31], [32], [13], [38].…”

“…They found that exception handling guidelines usually exist, but such guidelines are usually implicit and undocumented. Melo et al [37] conducted interviews with a similar goal, but focusing on Java developers. Their results show analogous trends: exception handling guidelines usually exist and they are usually implicit and undocumented.…”

Recommendation of Exception Handling Code in Mobile App Development

“…Coelho et al [6] studied exception handling bug hazards in Android based on GitHub and Google code issues. In [22], they studied exception handling guidelines adopted by Java developers.…”

Unveiling Design Problems Identification: Combining Multiple Symptoms

“…Exception handling is a programming mechanism to ensure software's robustness by allowing developers to deal with unexpected events without crashing or producing incorrect results. The use of exception-handling by developers is extensively explored (Melo et al 2019, Rocha et al 2018, Ebert et al 2015, De Padua et al 2017, Kery et al 2016, Nakshatri et al 2016, Asaduzzaman et al 2016, Cacho et al 2014). Melo et al conducted a qualitative analysis on the use of exception-handling guidelines by surveying 98 developers (Melo et al 2019).…”