Industry’s Cry for Tools that Support Large-Scale Refactoring
Thu 12 May 2022 20:05 - 20:10 at ICSE room 3-even hours - Refactoring 1 Chair(s): Mohamed Wiem Mkaouer
Fri 27 May 2022 11:20 - 11:25 at Room 306+307 - Papers 21: Programming Languages and Refactoring Chair(s): Julian Dolby
Software refactoring plays an important role in software engineering. Developers often turn to refactoring when they want to restructure software to improve its quality without changing its external behavior. Studies show that small-scale (floss) refactoring is common in industry and can often be performed by a single developer in short sessions, even though developers do much of this work manually instead of using refactoring tools. However, some refactoring efforts are much larger in scale, requiring entire teams and months of effort, and the role of tools in these efforts is not as well studied. In this paper, we report on a survey we conducted with developers to understand large-scale refactoring, its prevalence, and how tools support it. Our results from 107 industry developers demonstrate that projects commonly go through multiple large-scale refactorings, each of which requires considerable effort. While there is often a desire to refactor, other business concerns such as developing new features often take higher priority. Our study finds that developers use several categories of tools to support large-scale refactoring and rely more heavily on general-purpose tools like IDEs than on tools designed specifically to support refactoring. Tool support varies across the different activities, with some particularly challenging activities seeing little use of tools in practice. Our study demonstrates a clear need for better large-scale refactoring tools and an opportunity for refactoring researchers to make a difference in industry. The results we summarize in this paper is one concrete step towards this goal.
Thu 12 MayDisplayed time zone: Eastern Time (US & Canada) change
12:00 - 13:00 | Refactoring 2Technical Track / SEIP - Software Engineering in Practice / Journal-First Papers at ICSE room 4-even hours Chair(s): Julian Dolby IBM Research, USA | ||
12:00 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 | ||
12:05 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 | ||
12:10 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 | ||
12:15 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 |
20:00 - 21:00 | Refactoring 1SEIP - Software Engineering in Practice / Journal-First Papers / Technical Track at ICSE room 3-even hours Chair(s): Mohamed Wiem Mkaouer Rochester Institute of Technology | ||
20:00 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 | ||
20:05 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 | ||
20:10 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 |
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 |