FSE 2026
Sun 5 - Thu 9 July 2026 Montreal, Canada
Thu 9 Jul 2026 10:30 - 10:50 at MB 2.210 - Developers Chair(s): Ying Zhang

With the advent of powerful large language models (LLMs), research in automated software engineering has increasingly focused on leveraging these models to achieve a deeper semantic understanding of code or to engineer sophisticated agent-based processes. The predominant goal of these efforts is to enhance developer productivity through automated assistance. However, this research trajectory has largely overlooked a critical factor: the developers themselves. Programming is a deeply human and individualized activity; developers exhibit significant variation in their coding styles, tool-chain preferences, domain-specific expertise, and problem-solving strategies. Consequently, the current paradigm of one-size-fits-all code intelligence systems struggles to accommodate the unique characteristics and needs of individual developers. To address this gap, we introduce VirtualME, a novel IDE-embedded data infrastructure designed to model the developer by continuously capturing and interpreting their dynamic programming behaviors and preferences. VirtualME contains three components. (1) Log-level Behavior Extraction: it captures and extracts developers’ log-level behaviors (edits, navigations, etc.) from IDE. (2) Task-level Behavior Recognition: it aggregates log-level behaviors into task-level behaviors (“skimming API docs”, “iterative debugging”, etc.) via a multi-agent pipeline. (3) Developer-personality Measurement: it builds a rule engine to distill a four-dimensional developer persona: technology stack, ability, behavioral habits, and learning style. On top of VirtualME, we propose a solution for personalized repository-level knowledge Q&A by integrating the developer persona into a Chain-of-Thought (CoT) guided agent. We evaluated VirtualME by building a multi-repository benchmark with real-world developer trajectories, balancing correctness and personalization. Experimental results show that VirtualME-enhanced answers outperform generic baselines on five dimensions: correctness, cognitive-level fit, technology-stack relevance, behavioral-pattern alignment, and stylistic preference, yielding an average 33.80% improvement. Our results demonstrate that abundant, continuous developer-behavior data can unlockPersonalized Code Intelligence. By integrating this personalized understanding into the code intelligence loop, our approach paves the new way for adaptive and personalized code intelligence.

Thu 9 Jul

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

10:30 - 12:30
10:30
20m
Talk
On the Road to Personalized Code Intelligence: Portraiting and Assisting Developers Based on Their In-IDE Behaviors
Research Papers
Yuhong Liu Beihang University, YUNHE SU , Zhipeng Peng Beihang University, Zhiwen Luo Beihang University, Lin Shi Beihang University, Zhi Jin Wuhan University, Li Zhang Beihang University
Pre-print
10:50
10m
Talk
At What Cost? Software Developers’ Well-Being in the Age of GenAI
Ideas, Visions and Reflections
Mariam Guizani Queen's University, Canada, Maduka Subasinghage The University of Western Australia, Sherlock A. Licorish University of Otago, Sofia Ouhbi Uppsala University
Pre-print
11:00
20m
Talk
How Do Developers Interact with AI? An Exploratory Study on Modeling Developer Programming Behavior
Research Papers
Yinan Wu North Carolina State University, Ze Shi (Zane) Li University of Oklahoma, Kathryn Stolee North Carolina State University, Bowen Xu North Carolina State University
DOI Pre-print
11:30
20m
Research paper
ToxiShield: Promoting Inclusive Developer Communication through Real-Time Toxicity Filtering
Research Papers
Md Awsaf Alam Anindya Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology, Showvik Biswas Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology, Anindya Iqbal Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology Dhaka, Bangladesh, Jaydeb Sarker University of Nebraska at Omaha, Amiangshu Bosu Wayne State University
Link to publication DOI Pre-print Media Attached
11:50
20m
Talk
Automated Extraction and Analysis of Developer's Rationale in Open Source Software
Re-routed Presentations from Past Years
Mouna Dhaouadi University of Montreal, Bentley Oakes Polytechnique Montréal, Michalis Famelis Université de Montréal
Link to publication DOI
12:10
20m
Talk
Leveraging Risk Models to Improve Productivity for Effective Code Un-Freeze at Scale
Journal-First Paper
Audris Mockus University of Tennessee, Rui Abreu Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto, Portugal, Peter C Rigby Meta / Concordia University, David Amsallem Meta Platforms, Inc., Parveen Bansal Meta Platforms, Inc., Kaavya Chinniah Meta Platforms, Inc., Brian Ellis Meta Platforms, Inc., Peng Fan Meta Platforms, Inc., Jun Ge Meta Platforms, Inc., Wenlei He Meta, Kelly Hirano Meta Platforms, Inc., Sahil Kumar Meta Platforms, Inc., Ajay Lingapuram Meta Platforms, Inc., W. Andrew Loe III Meta Platforms, Inc., Megh Mehta Meta Platforms, Inc., Venus Montes Meta Platforms, Inc., Maher Saba Meta Platforms, Inc., Gursharan Singh Meta Platforms, Inc., Matt Steiner Meta Platforms, Inc., Weiyan Sun Meta Platforms, Inc., Siri Uppalapati Meta Platforms, Inc., Nachiappan Nagappan Meta Platforms, Inc.