CHASE 2025
Sun 27 - Mon 28 April 2025 Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
co-located with ICSE 2025
Mon 28 Apr 2025 11:45 - 12:00 at 210 - Software Professionals Experience / DS Session Chair(s): Rahul Mohanani, Irum Rauf

Background: GitHub introduced the suggestion feature to enable reviewers to explicitly suggest code modifications in pull requests. These suggestions make the reviewers’ feedback more actionable for the submitters and can act as a valuable knowledge source for newcomers. Still, little is known about how code review suggestions are used by developers, what impact they have on pull requests and how they are influenced by social coding dynamics. Aims: To bridge this knowledge gap, we conducted an empirical study on pull requests from 46 engineered GitHub projects, in which developers used code review suggestions. Method: We applied an open coding approach to uncover the types of suggestions and their usage frequency. We also mined pull request characteristics and assessed the impact of using suggestions on merge rate and resolution time as well as code complexity. Furthermore, we conducted a survey with the contributors of the projects we studied to gain insights about the influence of social factors on the usage and acceptance of code review suggestions. Results: We were able to uncover four suggestion types: code style suggestions, improvements, fixes, and documentation with improvements being the most frequent. We found that the use of suggestions positively affects the merge rate of pull requests but significantly increases resolution time without leading to a decrease in code complexity. Our survey results show that suggestions are more likely to be used by reviewers when the submitter is a newcomer. The results also show that developers mostly search suggestions when tracking rationale and when looking for code examples. Conclusion: Our work provides insights on the usage and impact of code review suggestions and provides recommendations for future automation efforts.

Mon 28 Apr

Displayed time zone: Eastern Time (US & Canada) change

11:00 - 12:30
Software Professionals Experience / DS SessionResearch Track at 210
Chair(s): Rahul Mohanani University of Jyväskylä, Irum Rauf The Open University, UK
11:00
15m
Talk
Exit the Code: A Model for Understanding Career Abandonment Intention Among Software Developers
Research Track
Tiago Massoni Federal University of Campina Grande, Ricardo Duarte State University of Paraíba, Ruan Oliveira EBSERH Paraíba
Pre-print
11:15
15m
Talk
Blockchain Developer Experience: A Multivocal Literature Review
Research Track
Pamella Soares de Sousa State University of Ceara, Allysson Allex Araújo Federal University of Cariri, Giuseppe Destefanis Brunel University of London, Rumyana Neykova Brunel University London, Raphael Saraiva State University of Ceara, Jerffeson Teixeira de Souza State University of Ceara, Brazil
Pre-print
11:30
15m
Talk
How Programmers Interact with Multimodal Software Documentation
Research Track
Deeksha M. Arya McGill University, Jin L.C. Guo McGill University, Martin P. Robillard McGill University
11:45
15m
Talk
How Do Developers Use Code Suggestions in Pull Request Reviews?
Research Track
Abir Bouraffa University of Hamburg, Yen Dieu Pham , Walid Maalej University of Hamburg
12:00
30m
Doctoral symposium paper
Doctoral and Early Career Symposium (DECS) Session
Research Track
Yvonne Dittrich IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark, Irum Rauf The Open University, UK
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