What do developers search for in source code and why

Panchenko, Oleksandr; Plattner, Hasso; Zeier, Alexander

doi:10.1145/1985429.1985438

Cited by 6 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 5 publications

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“…Third, it should not be limited to API usage queries. Although, recent studies show that a considerable amount of code search queries are related to API usage problems, programmers still use code search engines for other problems [3] [28].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spotting working code examples

Keivanloo

Rilling

Zou

2014

Proceedings of the 36th International Conference on Software Engineering

130

106

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Working code examples are useful resources for pragmatic reuse in software development. A working code example provides a solution to a specific programming problem. Earlier studies have shown that existing code search engines are not successful in finding working code examples. They fail in ranking high quality code examples at the top of the result set. To address this shortcoming, a variety of pattern-based solutions are proposed in the literature. However, these solutions cannot be integrated seamlessly in Internet-scale source code engines due to their high time complexity or query language restrictions. In this paper, we propose an approach for spotting working code examples which can be adopted by Internet-scale source code search engines. The time complexity of our approach is as low as the complexity of existing code search engines on the Internet and considerably lower than the pattern-based approaches supporting free-form queries. We study the performance of our approach using a representative corpus of 25,000 open source Java projects. Our findings support the feasibility of our approach for Internet-scale code search. We also found that our approach outperforms Ohloh Code search engine, previously known as Koders, in spotting working code examples.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spotting working code examples

Keivanloo

Rilling

Zou

2014

Proceedings of the 36th International Conference on Software Engineering

130

106

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show abstract

“…Developers seldom read the entire documentation before they start. They learn from code snippets on the web or other projects [13,14]. Code examples are small source code fragments whose purpose is to illustrate how a programming language construct, an API, or a specific function or method works [15].…”

Section: Programming By Examplementioning

confidence: 99%

Replacements and Replaceables: Making the Case for Code Variants

Vinayakarao,

Sondhi,

Keswani

et al. 2020

Preprint

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There are often multiple ways to implement the same requirement in source code. Different implementation choices can result in code snippets that are similar, and have been defined in multiple ways: code clones, examples, simions and variants. Currently, there is a lack of a consistent and unambiguous definition of such types of code snippets. Here we present a characterization study of code variants -a specific type of code snippets that differ from each other by at least one desired property, within a given code context. We distinguish code variants from other types of redundancies in source code, and demonstrate the significant role that they play: about 25% to 43% of developer discussions (in a set of nine open source projects) were about variants. We characterize different types of variants based on their code context and desired properties. As a demonstration of the possible use of our characterization of code variants, we show how search results can be ranked based on a desired property (e.g., speed of execution).

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“…Source code search is a fairly common task done by software developers. However, relatively little is known about how and why developers perform code search [33]. Not too many surveys have been done on this particular topic.…”

Section: Motivationmentioning

confidence: 99%

A search engine for finding and reusing architecturally significant code

Mujhid

Santos

Gopalakrishnan

et al. 2017

Journal of Systems and Software

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I am grateful to my thesis advisor Dr. Mehdi Mirakhorli. I could not have achieved this without his invaluable motivation, patience, and dedication to this work. I also thank Dr. Meiyappan Nagappan for serving on my thesis committee and his insightful comments and encouragement. Furthermore, I thank the rest of the department faculty and staff for their support through my study. I would like to express my gratitude to Joanna Cecilia for her active participation in this research work and for her knowledge and contribution for it. Also, I would like to thank my team member Raghuram Gopalakrishnan for assisting in conducting experiments for my research. Finally, I would like to thank the Iraqi High Committee of Education Development for the full scholarship to complete my Master study.

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What do developers search for in source code and why

Cited by 6 publications

References 5 publications

Spotting working code examples

Spotting working code examples

Replacements and Replaceables: Making the Case for Code Variants

A search engine for finding and reusing architecturally significant code

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