Shedding Light on Software Engineering-specific Metaphors and Idioms
Use of figurative language, such as metaphors and idioms, is common in our daily-life communications, and it can also be found in Software Engineering (SE) channels, such as comments on GitHub. Automatically interpreting figurative language is a challenging task, even with modern Large Language Models (LLMs), as it often involves subtle nuances. This is particularly true in the SE domain, where figurative language is frequently used to convey technical concepts, often bearing developer affect (e.g., spaghetti code). Surprisingly, there is a lack of studies on how figurative language in SE communications impacts the performance of automatic tools that focus on understanding developer communications, e.g., bug prioritization, incivility detection. Furthermore, it is an open question to what extent state-of-the-art LLMs interpret figurative expressions in domain-specific communication such as software engineering. To address this gap, we study the prevalence and impact of figurative language in SE communication channels. This study contributes to understanding the role of figurative language in SE, the potential of LLMs in interpreting them, and its impact on automated SE communication analysis. Our results demonstrate the effectiveness of fine-tuning LLMs with figurative language in SE and its potential impact on automated tasks that involve affect. We found that, among three state-of-the-art LLMs, the best improved fine-tuned versions have an average improvement of 6.66% on a GitHub emotion classification dataset, 7.07% on a GitHub incivility classification dataset, and 3.71% on a Bugzilla bug report prioritization dataset.
Fri 19 AprDisplayed time zone: Lisbon change
11:00 - 12:30 | Analytics 4Demonstrations / Software Engineering in Practice / Journal-first Papers / Research Track at Amália Rodrigues Chair(s): Gabriele Bavota Software Institute @ Università della Svizzera Italiana | ||
11:00 15mResearch paper | Shedding Light on Software Engineering-specific Metaphors and Idioms Research Track Mia Mohammad Imran Virginia Commonwealth University, Preetha Chatterjee Drexel University, USA, Kostadin Damevski Virginia Commonwealth University Pre-print | ||
11:15 15mTalk | MiniMon: Minimizing Android Applications with Intelligent Monitoring-Based Debloating Research Track Jiakun Liu Singapore Management University, Zicheng Zhang School of Computing and Information Systems, Singapore Management University, Xing Hu Zhejiang University, Ferdian Thung Singapore Management University, Shahar Maoz Tel Aviv University, Debin Gao Singapore Management University, Eran Toch Tel Aviv University, Zhipeng Zhao Singapore Management University, David Lo Singapore Management University | ||
11:30 15mTalk | On the Costs and Benefits of Adopting Lifelong Learning for Software Analytics - Empirical Study on Brown Build and Risk Prediction Software Engineering in Practice Doriane Olewicki Queen's University, Sarra Habchi Ubisoft Montréal, Mathieu Nayrolles Ubisoft Montreal, Mojtaba Faramarzi Université de Montréal, Sarath Chandar Polytechnique Montréal, Bram Adams Queen's University Pre-print | ||
11:45 15mTalk | An Ethnographic Study on the CI of A Large Scale Project Software Engineering in Practice Zikuan Wang Nanjing University, Bohan Liu Nanjing University, Zeye Zhan Nanjing University, He Zhang Nanjing University, Gongyuan Li Nanjing University | ||
12:00 7mTalk | An Empirical Study of Refactoring Rhythms and Tactics in the Software Development Process Journal-first Papers Shayan Noei Queen's University, Heng Li Polytechnique Montréal, Stefanos Georgiou Queen's University, Ying Zou Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario | ||
12:07 7mTalk | Insights into Software Development Approaches: Mining Q&A Repositories [Journal-first] Journal-first Papers Arif Ali Khan University of Oulu, Javed Ali Khan University of Hertforshire Hertfordshire, UK, Muhammad Azeem Akbar LUT University, Zhou Peng Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics Nanjing, China, Mahdi Fahmideh University of Southern Queensland, Arif Ali Khan University of Oulu, Arif Ali Khan University of Oulu Link to publication DOI | ||
12:14 7mTalk | Can My Microservice Tolerate an Unreliable Database? Resilience Testing with Fault Injection and Visualization Demonstrations Michael Assad Technical University of Munich, Christopher S. Meiklejohn Carnegie Mellon University, Heather Miller Carnegie Mellon University and Two Sigma, Stephan Krusche Technical University of Munich DOI Pre-print Media Attached | ||
12:21 7mTalk | CATMA: Conformance Analysis Tool For Microservice Applications Demonstrations Clinton Cao Delft University of Technology, Simon Schneider Hamburg University of Technology, Nicolás E. Díaz Ferreyra Hamburg University of Technology, Sicco Verwer TU Delft, Annibale Panichella Delft University of Technology, Riccardo Scandariato Hamburg University of Technology Pre-print Media Attached | ||