Managing design-level complexity in industrial software systems remains challenging, often resulting in error-prone, difficult-to-maintain codebases. Despite extensive research on metrics and refactoring tools, architects frequently rely more on intuition than on algorithmic approaches, highlighting the need for approaches that better align with expert judgment. This research proposes that large language models (LLMs), trained specifically to generate a ``concern space,'' can organize program entities based on shared concerns, facilitating more meaningful metrics, refactoring suggestions, and system-level design views. Initial work with ConcernBERT, a purpose-trained LLM, shows significant advancements in representing cohesion over traditional concept-based methods. ConcernBERT uses a contrastive learning approach, where embeddings are learned by positioning entities addressing similar concerns close together while distancing unrelated ones. Complementing this, the Deicide algorithm identifies responsibility modules within classes, generating decomposition recommendations that align with historical maintenance patterns. Preliminary results are promising: ConcernBERT demonstrates strong performance in embedding entities by concern, closely aligning with expert-annotated ground truth. Future efforts will focus on applying these techniques across entire software systems.
Tue 29 AprDisplayed time zone: Eastern Time (US & Canada) change
14:00 - 15:00 | Session 3: Maintenance (talks and panel)Doctoral Symposium at 212 Chair(s): Alexander Serebrenik Eindhoven University of Technology | ||
14:00 6mTalk | Concern-based Management of Software Design Complexity Doctoral Symposium Jason Lefever Drexel University | ||
14:06 6mTalk | Mitigating Waste That Tacitly Accrues in Continuous Integration Pipelines Doctoral Symposium Nimmi Rashinika Weeraddana University of Waterloo Pre-print | ||
14:12 6mTalk | Automated Detection and Refactoring of Mock Clones in Java Projects Doctoral Symposium Gengwu Zhao Stevens Institute of Technology | ||
14:18 6mTalk | Practical Preprocessing of Logs at Scale Doctoral Symposium JianChen Zhao University of Waterloo | ||
14:24 6mTalk | Bridging the Gap Between Log Parsing Techniques and Practitioners: Challenges and Solutions Doctoral Symposium Hetong Dai University of Waterloo | ||
14:30 30mPanel | Panel: Maintenance Doctoral Symposium Sridhar Chimalakonda Indian Institute of Technology Tirupati, Wesley Assunção Johannes Kepler University Linz, Hetong Dai University of Waterloo, Jason Lefever Drexel University, Nimmi Weeraddana University of Waterloo, JianChen Zhao University of Waterloo, Gengwu Zhao Stevens Institute of Technology |