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ICPC 2020
Mon 13 - Wed 15 July 2020
co-located with ICSE 2020
Tue 14 Jul 2020 15:24 - 15:36 at ICPC - Session 7: About Developers Chair(s): Wahab Hamou-Lhadj

To characterize the building blocks of a legacy software system (e.g., structure, dependencies), programmers usually spend a long time navigating its source code. Yet, modern integrated development environments (IDEs) do not provide appropriate means to efficiently achieve complex software comprehension tasks. To deal with this unfulfilled need, we present Hunter, a tool for the visualization of JavaScript applications. Hunter visualizes source code through a set of coordinated views that include a node-link diagram that depicts the dependencies among the components of a system, and a treemap that helps programmers to orientate when navigating its structure. In this paper, we report on a controlled experiment that evaluates Hunter. We asked 16 participants to solve a set of software comprehension tasks, and assessed their effectiveness in terms of (i) user performance (i.e., completion time, accuracy, and attention), and (ii) user experience (i.e., emotions, usability). We found that when using Hunter programmers required significantly less time to complete various software comprehension tasks and achieved a significantly higher accuracy. We also found that the node-link diagram panel of Hunter gets most of the attention of programmers, whereas the source code panel does so in Visual Studio Code. Moreover, programmers considered that Hunter exhibits a good user experience.

Tue 14 Jul

Displayed time zone: (UTC) Coordinated Universal Time change

15:00 - 16:00
Session 7: About DevelopersIndustry / Research / Programming Education at ICPC
Chair(s): Wahab Hamou-Lhadj Concordia University, Montreal, Canada
15:00
12m
Paper
How Graduate Computing Students Search When Using an Unfamiliar Programming Language
Research
Gina Bai North Carolina State University, Joshua Kayani , Kathryn Stolee North Carolina State University
Pre-print Media Attached
15:12
12m
Paper
What Drives the Reading Order of Programmers? An Eye Tracking Study
Research
Norman Peitek Leibniz Institute for Neurobiology, Janet Siegmund TU Chemnitz, Sven Apel Saarland University
Pre-print Media Attached
15:24
12m
Paper
Evaluating a Visual Approach for Understanding JavaScript Source Code
Research
Martín Dias University of Chile, Diego Orellana University of Chile, Santiago Vidal ISISTAN-CONICET, Leonel Merino University of Stuttgart, Alexandre Bergel University of Chile
Pre-print Media Attached
15:36
12m
Paper
How do Students Experience and Judge Software Comprehension Techniques?
Programming Education
Regina Hebig University of Gothenburg, Truong Ho-Quang , Rodi Jolak Chalmers | University of Gothenburg, Jan Schroeder Chalmers | University of Gothenburg, Linero Humberto Chalmers University of Technology, Ågren Magnus Chalmers University of Technology, Salome Maro Chalmers | University of Gothenburg
Media Attached
15:48
12m
Paper
Understanding What Software Engineers Are Working on — The Work-Item Prediction Challenge
Industry
Ralf Laemmel Facebook London, Alvin Kerber Facebook, Liane Praza
Pre-print Media Attached