Garbage Collection Makes Rust Easier to Use: A Randomized Controlled Trial of the Bronze Garbage CollectorNominated for Distinguished Paper
Wed 11 May 2022 13:25 - 13:30 at ICSE room 1-odd hours - Programming Languages 3 Chair(s): Emma Söderberg
Fri 27 May 2022 11:10 - 11:15 at Room 306+307 - Papers 21: Programming Languages and Refactoring Chair(s): Julian Dolby
Fri 27 May 2022 13:30 - 15:00 at Ballroom Gallery - Posters 3
Rust is a general-purpose programming language that is both type- and memory-safe. Rust does not use a garbage collector, but rather achieves these properties through a sophisticated, but complex, type system. Doing so makes Rust very efficient, but makes Rust relatively hard to learn and use. We designed Bronze, an optional, library-based garbage collector for Rust. To see whether Bronze could make Rust more usable, we conducted a randomized controlled trial with volunteers from a 633-person class, collecting data from 428 students in total. We found that for a task that required managing complex aliasing, Bronze users were more likely to complete the task in the time available, and those who did so required only about a third as much time (4 hours vs. 12 hours). We found no significant difference in total time, even though Bronze users re-did the task without Bronze afterward. Surveys indicated that ownership, borrowing, and lifetimes were primary causes of the challenges that users faced when using Rust.
Mon 9 MayDisplayed time zone: Eastern Time (US & Canada) change
Wed 11 MayDisplayed time zone: Eastern Time (US & Canada) change
Fri 27 MayDisplayed time zone: Eastern Time (US & Canada) change
11:00 - 12:30 | Papers 21: Programming Languages and RefactoringTechnical Track / SEIP - Software Engineering in Practice / Journal-First Papers / NIER - New Ideas and Emerging Results at Room 306+307 Chair(s): Julian Dolby IBM Research, USA | ||
11:00 5mTalk | Grammars for Free: Toward Grammar Inference for Ad Hoc Parsers NIER - New Ideas and Emerging Results Pre-print Media Attached | ||
11:05 5mTalk | Learning and Programming Challenges of Rust: A Mixed-Methods Study Technical Track Shuofei Zhu The Pennsylvania State University, Ziyi Zhang University of Wisconsin–Madison, Boqin Qin China Telecom Cloud Computing Corporation, Aiping Xiong The Pennsylvania State University, Linhai Song Pennsylvania State University, USA DOI Pre-print Media Attached | ||
11:10 5mTalk | Garbage Collection Makes Rust Easier to Use: A Randomized Controlled Trial of the Bronze Garbage CollectorNominated for Distinguished Paper Technical Track Michael Coblenz University of Maryland at College Park, Michelle Mazurek University of Maryland, Michael Hicks University of Maryland at College Park DOI Pre-print Media Attached | ||
11:15 5mTalk | How Do I Refactor This? An Empirical Study on Refactoring Trends and Topics in Stack Overflow Journal-First Papers Anthony Peruma Rochester Institute of Technology, Steven Simmons Rochester Institute of Technology, Eman Abdullah AlOmar Stevens Institute of Technology, Christian D. Newman Rochester Institute of Technology, Mohamed Wiem Mkaouer Rochester Institute of Technology, Ali Ouni ETS Montreal, University of Quebec Link to publication DOI Pre-print Media Attached | ||
11:20 5mTalk | Industry’s Cry for Tools that Support Large-Scale Refactoring SEIP - Software Engineering in Practice James Ivers Carnegie Mellon University, USA, Robert Nord Software Engineering Institute, Ipek Ozkaya Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute, Chris Seifried Carnegie Mellon University, USA, Christopher Steven Timperley Carnegie Mellon University, Marouane Kessentini Oakland University, USA Pre-print Media Attached | ||
11:25 5mTalk | DrAsync: Identifying and Visualizing Anti-Patterns in Asynchronous JavaScriptBest Artifact Award Technical Track Alexi Turcotte Northeastern University, Michael D. Shah Northeastern University, USA, Mark W. Aldrich Tufts University, Frank Tip Northeastern University Pre-print Media Attached | ||
11:30 5mTalk | Inferring And Applying Type Changes Technical Track Ameya Ketkar Oregon State University, USA, Oleg Smirnov JetBrains Research, Saint Petersburg State University, Nikolaos Tsantalis Concordia University, Danny Dig University of Colorado Boulder, USA, Timofey Bryksin JetBrains Research; HSE University Pre-print Media Attached |