Developers ask reachability questions
Abstract
A reachability question is a search across feasible paths through a program for target statements matching search criteria. In three separate studies, we found that reachability questions are common and often time consuming to answer. In the first study, we observed 13 developers in the lab and found that half of the bugs developers inserted were associated with reachability questions. In the second study, 460 professional software developers reported asking questions that may be answered using reachability questions more than 9 times a day, and 82% rated one or more as at least somewhat hard to answer. In the third study, we observed 17 developers in the field and found that 9 of the 10 longest activities were associated with reachability questions. These findings suggest that answering reachability questions is an important source of difficulty understanding large, complex codebases.
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Developers seek information to answer specific questions, test mental hypotheses, develop context, or follow leads.
“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 [23]
Developers seek information about how to use APIs, about data or control flow, and about requirements.
“These include the need for information about how to use APIs [10], about data or control flow [23,46], and about requirements [31].”
From Foraging and navigations, fundamentally: developers' predictions of value and cost (2016) · cites this paper as [23]
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- Authors
- LaToza, T. D., & Myers, B. A.
- Affiliations
- Carnegie Mellon University (US)
- Venue
- Proceedings of the 32nd ACM/IEEE International Conference on Software Engineering - Volume 1
- Publisher
- ACM
- Published
- 2010-05
- Pages
- 185-194
- ISSN
- 0270-5257 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2132383311
- Cited by
- 145
- References
- 20
- Citations by year
- 2026: 3 · 2025: 4 · 2024: 11 · 2023: 9 · 2022: 7 · 2021: 8 · 2020: 7 · 2019: 7 · 2018: 6 · 2017: 8 · 2016: 15 · 2015: 12 · 2014: 13 · 2013: 13 · 2012: 8
- FWCI
- 7.86
- Type
- conference paper
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- ACM/IEEE International Conference on Software Engineering: Companion Proceedings (ICSE-Companion) (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- Division of Computing and Communication Foundations (CCF-0811610)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Information Systems › Software Engineering Research
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Software › Software Testing and Debugging Techniques
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Information Systems › Software Engineering Techniques and Practices
- Keywords
- program comprehension, developer behavior, path finding, developer interviews, software development activities
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