A study on developer perception of transformation languages for refactoring

Proceedings of the 2nd International Workshop on Refactoring Pub Date : 2018-09-04 DOI:10.1145/3242163.3242170

Christian D. Newman, Mohamed Wiem Mkaouer, M. Collard, Jonathan I. Maletic

{"title":"A study on developer perception of transformation languages for refactoring","authors":"Christian D. Newman, Mohamed Wiem Mkaouer, M. Collard, Jonathan I. Maletic","doi":"10.1145/3242163.3242170","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Although there is much research advancing state-of-art of program transformation tools, their application in industry source code change problems has not yet been gauged. In this context, the purpose of this paper is to better understand developer familiarity and comfort with these languages by conducting a survey. It poses, and answers, four research questions to understand how frequently source code transformation languages are applied to refactoring tasks, how well-known these languages are in industry, what developers think are obstacles to adoption, and what developer refactoring habits tell us about their current use, or underuse, of transformation languages. The results show that while source code transformation languages can fill a needed niche in refactoring, research must motivate their application. We provide explanations and insights based on data, aimed at the program transformation and refactoring communities, with a goal to motivate future research and ultimately improve industry adoption of transformation languages for refactoring tasks.","PeriodicalId":404412,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the 2nd International Workshop on Refactoring","volume":"10 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"2018-09-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"10","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Proceedings of the 2nd International Workshop on Refactoring","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1145/3242163.3242170","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"","JCRName":"","Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 10

Abstract

Although there is much research advancing state-of-art of program transformation tools, their application in industry source code change problems has not yet been gauged. In this context, the purpose of this paper is to better understand developer familiarity and comfort with these languages by conducting a survey. It poses, and answers, four research questions to understand how frequently source code transformation languages are applied to refactoring tasks, how well-known these languages are in industry, what developers think are obstacles to adoption, and what developer refactoring habits tell us about their current use, or underuse, of transformation languages. The results show that while source code transformation languages can fill a needed niche in refactoring, research must motivate their application. We provide explanations and insights based on data, aimed at the program transformation and refactoring communities, with a goal to motivate future research and ultimately improve industry adoption of transformation languages for refactoring tasks.

查看原文本刊更多论文

开发人员对重构转换语言认知的研究

尽管有很多关于程序转换工具的研究，但是它们在工业源代码更改问题中的应用还没有被评估。在这种情况下，本文的目的是通过进行调查来更好地了解开发人员对这些语言的熟悉程度和舒适度。它提出并回答了四个研究问题，以了解源代码转换语言应用于重构任务的频率，这些语言在业界的知名度，开发人员认为采用这些语言的障碍是什么，以及开发人员的重构习惯告诉我们他们当前使用或未充分使用转换语言的情况。结果表明，虽然源代码转换语言可以填补重构所需的空白，但研究必须激励它们的应用。我们针对程序转换和重构社区提供基于数据的解释和见解，目的是激励未来的研究，并最终提高行业对重构任务转换语言的采用。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

求助全文

约1分钟内获得全文求助全文

来源期刊

Proceedings of the 2nd International Workshop on Refactoring

自引率

0.00%

发文量