The DOI matches its Crossref record; 32 of the 32 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Use, disuse, and misuse of automated refactorings
Abstract
Though refactoring tools have been available for more than a decade, research has shown that programmers underutilize such tools. However, little is known about why programmers do not take advantage of these tools. We have conducted a field study on programmers in their natural settings working on their code. As a result, we collected a set of interaction data from about 1268 hours of programming using our minimally intrusive data collectors. Our quantitative data show that programmers prefer lightweight methods of invoking refactorings, usually perform small changes using the refactoring tool, proceed with an automated refactoring even when it may change the behavior of the program, and rarely preview the automated refactorings. We also interviewed nine of our participants to provide deeper insight about the patterns that we observed in the behavioral data. We found that programmers use predictable automated refactorings even if they have rare bugs or change the behavior of the program. This paper reports some of the factors that affect the use of automated refactorings such as invocation method, awareness, naming, trust, and predictability and the major mismatches between programmers' expectations and automated refactorings. The results of this work contribute to producing more effective tools for refactoring complex software.
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“Prior studies also reported that software architects and developers primarily rely on manual efforts for large-scale refactoring activities, with minor support from disjoint tools [37, 71, 104].”
From Software Architecture in Practice: Challenges and Opportunities (2023) · cites this paper as [104]
Citations
Cites
Basics of Qualitative Research (3rd ed.): Techniques and Procedures for Developing Grounded Theory
Corbin, J., & Strauss, A. (2008) · SAGE · doi:10.4135/9781452230153 · Cited by 12,136
Trust in Automation: Designing for Appropriate Reliance
Lee, J. D., & See, K. A. (2004) · Human Factors: The Journal of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society · doi:10.1518/hfes.46.1.50_30392 · Cited by 6,605
Humans and automation: Use, misuse, disuse, abuse
Parasuraman, R., & Riley, V. (1997) · Human Factors: The Journal of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society · doi:10.1518/001872097778543886 · Cited by 4,554
Refactoring improving the design of existing code
Saca, M. A. (2017) · IEEE Central America and Panama Convention (CONCAPAN) · doi:10.1109/concapan.2017.8278488 · Cited by 2,077
Refactoring object-oriented frameworks
Opdyke, W. F. (1992) · Cited by 1,014
A few billion lines of code later
Bessey, A., Block, K., Chelf, B., Chou, A., Fulton, B., Hallem, S., Henri-Gros, C., Kamsky, A., McPeak, S., & Engler, D. (2010) · Communications of the ACM · doi:10.1145/1646353.1646374 · Cited by 634
Detection strategies: metrics-based rules for detecting design flaws
Marinescu, R. (2004) · Proceedings/Proceedings - Conference on Software Maintenance · doi:10.1109/icsm.2004.1357820 · Cited by 552
How We Refactor, and How We Know It
Murphy-Hill, E., Parnin, C., & Black, A. P. (2012) · IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering · doi:10.1109/tse.2011.41 · Cited by 547
How are Java software developers using the Eclipse IDE?
Murphy, G. C., Kersten, M., & Findlater, L. (2006) · IEEE Software · doi:10.1109/ms.2006.105 · Cited by 413
The costs and benefits of pair programming
Cockburn, A., & Williams, L. A. (2001) · Cited by 403
Research works printed but not linked: 10
- 0, Eclipse Documentation on Refactoring Wizard
- 0, ReSharper
- 0, Eclipse Usage Data
- tsantalis, 2010, Evaluation and Improvement of Software Architecture Identification of Design Problems in Object- Oriented Systems and Resolution Through Refactorings
- beck, 2010, eXtreme Programming Explained
- 0, Xcode
- 0, Eclipse
- 10.1518/hfes.46.1.50.30392 · DOI · Paper page
- 0, IntelliJ IDEA
- 0, Netbeans
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Code smells and refactoring: A tertiary systematic review of challenges and observations
Lacerda, G., Petrillo, F. D. S., Pimenta, M. S., & Guéhéneuc, Y. (2020) · Journal of Systems and Software · doi:10.1016/j.jss.2020.110610 · Cited by 250
An Empirical Study of RefactoringChallenges and Benefits at Microsoft
Kim, M., Zimmermann, T., & Nagappan, N. (2014) · IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering · doi:10.1109/tse.2014.2318734 · Cited by 231
A Comparative Study of Manual and Automated Refactorings
Negara, S., Chen, N., Vakilian, M., Johnson, R. E., & Dig, D. (2013) · Lecture notes in computer science · doi:10.1007/978-3-642-39038-8_23 · Cited by 154
Self-citationIs It Dangerous to Use Version Control Histories to Study Source Code Evolution?
Negara, S., Vakilian, M., Chen, N., Johnson, R. E., & Dig, D. (2012) · Lecture notes in computer science · doi:10.1007/978-3-642-31057-7_5 · Cited by 100
Self-citationRatol, I. K., & Robillard, M. P. (2017) · IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering (ASE) · doi:10.1109/ase.2017.8115624 · Cited by 75
Metadata
- Authors
- Vakilian, M., Chen, N., Negara, S., Rajkumar, B. A., Bailey, B. P., & Johnson, R. E.
- Affiliations
- University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (US)
- Venue
- 2012 34th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE)
- Publisher
- IEEE
- Published
- 2012-06
- Pages
- 233-243
- ISSN
- 0270-5257 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W3151395068
- Cited by
- 106
- References
- 32
- Citations by year
- 2025: 2 · 2024: 5 · 2023: 10 · 2022: 8 · 2021: 6 · 2020: 15 · 2019: 7 · 2018: 8 · 2017: 12 · 2016: 5 · 2015: 9 · 2014: 5 · 2013: 10 · 2012: 4
- FWCI
- 7.04
- Type
- conference paper
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- ACM/IEEE International Conference on Software Engineering: Companion Proceedings (ICSE-Companion) (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- National Science Foundation
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Information Systems › Software Engineering Research
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Information Systems › Software Engineering Techniques and Practices
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Software › Logic, programming, and type systems
- Keywords
- automated refactoring, refactoring tools, programmer behavior, tool misuse, software maintenance
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