The DOI matches its Crossref record; 22 of the 22 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Questions programmers ask during software evolution tasks
Abstract
Though many tools are available to help programmers working on change tasks, and several studies have been conducted to understand how programmers comprehend systems, little is known about the specific kinds of questions programmers ask when evolving a code base. To fill this gap we conducted two qualitative studies of programmers performing change tasks to medium to large sized programs. One study involved newcomers working on assigned change tasks to a medium-sized code base. The other study involved industrial programmers working on their own change tasks on code with which they had experience. The focus of our analysis has been on what information a programmer needs to know about a code base while performing a change task and also on howthey go about discovering that information. Based on this analysis we catalog and categorize 44 different kinds of questions asked by our participants. We also describe important context for how those questions were answered by our participants, including their use of tools.
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“Despite these gains, however, little is known at the foundational level of developer navigation-how well developers go about choosing where to navigate.”
From Foraging and navigations, fundamentally: developers' predictions of value and cost (2016) · cites this paper as [42]
In the citing paper
“These studies have also revealed that developers seek this information to answer specific questions that they have [23,42], to test mental hypotheses about how an existing program works [4], to develop an overall sense of context [13], or to follow leads that simply look relevant to their current task [26].”
From Foraging and navigations, fundamentally: developers' predictions of value and cost (2016) · cites this paper as [42]
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Metadata
- Authors
- Sillito, J., Murphy, G. C., & De Volder, K.
- Affiliations
- University of British Columbia (CA)
- University of British Columbia, Vancouver, B.C. Canada
- Venue
- Proceedings of the 14th ACM SIGSOFT international symposium on Foundations of software engineering
- Publisher
- ACM
- Published
- 2006-11-05
- Pages
- 23-34
- OpenAlex
- W2080534028
- Semantic Scholar
- 3dda5d9a5e4eb27760e8a4a381a1057ce0ba7d65
- Cited by
- 270
- References
- 22
- Citations by year
- 2026: 6 · 2025: 14 · 2024: 9 · 2023: 1 · 2022: 10 · 2021: 11 · 2020: 9 · 2019: 10 · 2018: 12 · 2017: 18 · 2016: 16 · 2015: 20 · 2014: 20 · 2013: 25 · 2012: 23
- FWCI
- 9.47
- Type
- conference paper
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- ACM Joint European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering (ESEC/FSE) (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada
- 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 › Advanced Software Engineering Methodologies
- Keywords
- software evolution, information needs, novice programmers, software tools
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