How live coding affects developers' coding behavior

Abstract

We report on the behavior of developers working with a live coding environment, which provides information about a program's execution immediately after each change to the source code. The live coding environment we used shows information about each individual source code line, e.g., changed variable values or truth values of conditions. In comparison to developers working in a non-live environment, those working live found and fixed bugs they introduced significantly faster. Further, working live encouraged developers to switch between editing and debugging phases more frequently.