1,720,959 research outputs found
Generative Artificial Intelligence for Test-Driven Development: GAI4-TDD
No full textTest-Driven Development (TDD) is an agile software development approach. It promotes short cycles, composed of three phases each, to incrementally implement software functionality: Red, Green, and Refactor. In the Red Phase, the TDD developer writes a unit test for a small chunk of functionality not yet implemented and watches the test fail. In the Green Phase, the TDD developer writes production code to make the test pass as quickly as possible. Finally, in the refactor phase, the TDD developer 'cleans' written code. In this demo paper, we present GAI4-TDD (Generative Artificial Intelligence for Test-Driven Development), a PyCharm plugin to support the Green Phase of TDD. Specifically, this plugin generates production code from the tests the TDD developer had written in the Red Phase so that the generated code makes these tests pass. Previous studies have shown that TDD can be beneficial not only in the 'traditional' software development context but also in the Embedded Systems (ESs) development context. We preliminary assessed GAI4-TDD in the latter context through a laboratory empirical study on three ESs. We observed that in the greater part of the cases, GAI4-TDD generates production code that successfully implements the chunk of functionality required. A video showing GAI4-TDD in action is available at: https://youtu.be/30IDb-6NgS4
On the spread and evolution of dead methods in Java desktop applications: an exploratory study
Full text linkBackground. Dead code is a code smell. It can refer to code blocks, fields, methods, etc. that are unused and/or unreachable—e.g., if a method is unused and/or unreachable, it is a dead method. Past research has shown that the presence of dead code in source code harms its comprehensibility and maintainability. Nevertheless, there is still little empirical evidence on the spread of this code smell in the source code of commercial and open-source software applications. Aims. Our goal is to gather, through an exploratory study, empirical evidence on the spread and evolution of dead methods in open-source Java desktop applications. Method. We quantitatively analyzed the commit histories of 23 open-source Java desktop applications, whose software projects were hosted on GitHub. To investigate the spread and evolution of dead methods, we focused on dead methods detected at a commit level. The total number of analyzed commits in our study is 1,587. The perspective of our exploratory study is that of both practitioners and researchers. Results. We can summarize the most important take-away results as follows: (i) dead methods affect open-source Java desktop applications; (ii) dead methods generally survive for a long time before being “buried” or “revived;” (iii) dead methods that are then revived tend to survive less, as compared to dead methods that are then buried; (iv) dead methods are rarely revived; and (v) most dead methods are stillborn, rather than becoming dead later. Given the exploratory nature of our study, we believe that its results will help researchers to conduct more resource- and time-demanding research on dead methods and, in general, on dead code. Conclusions. We can conclude that developers should carefully handle dead code (and thus dead methods) since it is harmful, widespread, rarely revived, and survives for a long time in software applications
A Folklore Confirmation on the Removal of Dead Code
No full textIn this folklore-confirmation short paper, we present the results of a study on the removal of dead code. We aim to gather evidence on the impact of dead-method removal on the internal structure of source code and the usage of resources such as compilation time and space to store executable code. To that end, we studied 23 open-source Java desktop applications hosted on GitHub. We cleaned up each of these applications from its dead methods to obtain two versions: one with dead methods (i.e., original version) and another one without them (i.e., cleaned version). For each of these applications, we compared its versions (original and cleaned) to determine whether, and to what extent, the removal of dead methods affects the internal structure of source code and the usage of resources. We observed that, after removing dead methods, the internal structure of source code significantly improves, while the time to compile source code significantly diminishes as well as the space to store executable code
On the spread and evolution of dead methods in Java desktop applications: an exploratory study
No full textBackground. Dead code is a code smell. It can refer to code blocks, fields, methods, etc. that are unused and/or unreachable-e.g., if a method is unused and/or unreachable, it is a dead method. Past research has shown that the presence of dead code in source code harms its comprehensibility and maintainability. Nevertheless, there is still little empirical evidence on the spread of this code smell in the source code of commercial and open-source software applications.Aims. Our goal is to gather, through an exploratory study, empirical evidence on the spread and evolution of dead methods in open-source Java desktop applications.Method. We quantitatively analyzed the commit histories of 23 open-source Java desktop applications, whose software projects were hosted on GitHub. To investigate the spread and evolution of dead methods, we focused on dead methods detected at a commit level. The total number of analyzed commits in our study is 1,587. The perspective of our exploratory study is that of both practitioners and researchers.Results. We can summarize the most important take-away results as follows: (i) dead methods affect open-source Java desktop applications; (ii) dead methods generally survive for a long time before being "buried" or "revived;" (iii) dead methods that are then revived tend to survive less, as compared to dead methods that are then buried; (iv) dead methods are rarely revived; and (v) most dead methods are stillborn, rather than becoming dead later. Given the exploratory nature of our study, we believe that its results will help researchers to conduct more resource- and time-demanding research on dead methods and, in general, on dead code.Conclusions. We can conclude that developers should carefully handle dead code (and thus dead methods) since it is harmful, widespread, rarely revived, and survives for a long time in software applications
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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