ASE 2025
Sun 16 - Thu 20 November 2025 Seoul, South Korea

This program is tentative and subject to change.

Tue 18 Nov 2025 16:50 - 17:00 at Grand Hall 5 - Maintenance & Evolution 3

Genetic Improvement (GI) of software automatically creates alternative software versions which are improved according to certain properties of interests (e.g., running-time). Search-based GI excels at navigating large program spaces, but operates primarily at syntactic level. In contrast, Large Language Models (LLMs) offer semantic-aware edits, yet lack goal-directed feedback and control (which is instead a strength of GI). As such, we propose the investigation of a new research line on AI-powered GI aimed at incorporating semantic aware search. We take a first step at it by augmenting GI with the use of automated clustering of LLM edits. We provide initial empirical evidence that our proposal, dubbed PatchCat, allows us to automatically and effectively categorize LLM-suggested patches. PatchCat identified 18 different types of software patches and categorized newly suggested patches with high accuracy. It also enabled detecting NoOp edits in advance and, prospectively, to skip test suite execution to save resources in many cases. These results, coupled with the fact that PatchCat works with small, local LLMs, are a promising step toward interpretable, efficient, and green GI. We outline a rich agenda of future work and call for the community to join our vision of building a principled understanding of LLM-driven mutations, guiding the GI search process with semantic signals.

This program is tentative and subject to change.

Tue 18 Nov

Displayed time zone: Seoul change

16:00 - 17:00
Maintenance & Evolution 3Industry Showcase / NIER Track at Grand Hall 5
16:00
10m
Talk
An Empirical Study on UI Overlap in OpenHarmony Applications
Industry Showcase
Farong Liu Beihang University, Mingyi Zhou Beihang University, Li Li Beihang University
16:10
10m
Talk
Metrics Driven Reengineering and Continuous Code Improvement at Meta
Industry Showcase
Audris Mockus University of Tennessee, Peter C Rigby Meta / Concordia University, Rui Abreu Meta, Nachiappan Nagappan Meta Platforms, Inc.
16:20
10m
Talk
Prompt-with-Me: in-IDE Structured Prompt Management for LLM-Driven Software Engineering
Industry Showcase
Ziyou Li Delft University of Technology, Agnia Sergeyuk JetBrains Research, Maliheh Izadi Delft University of Technology
16:30
10m
Talk
Are We SOLID Yet? An Empirical Study on Prompting LLMs to Detect Design Principle Violations
NIER Track
Fatih Pehlivan Bilkent University, Arçin Ülkü Ergüzen Bilkent University, Sahand Moslemi Yengejeh Bilkent University, Mayasah Lami Bilkent University, Anil Koyuncu Bilkent University
16:40
10m
Talk
Shrunk, Yet Complete: Code Shrinking-Resilient Android Third-Party Library Detection
Industry Showcase
Jingkun Zhang Institute of Software, Chinese Academy of Sciences; University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Jingzheng Wu Institute of Software, The Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xiang Ling Institute of Software, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Tianyue Luo Institute of Software, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Bolin Zhou Institute of Software, Chinese Academy of Sciences; University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Mutian Yang Beijing ZhongKeWeiLan Technology Co.,Ltd.
16:50
10m
Talk
LLM-Guided Genetic Improvement: Envisioning Semantic Aware Automated Software Evolution
NIER Track
Karine Even-Mendoza King’s College London, Alexander E.I. Brownlee University of Stirling, Alina Geiger Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Carol Hanna University College London, Justyna Petke University College London, Federica Sarro University College London, Dominik Sobania Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz