Publications

2023

1. [VL/HCC 2023] Exploring the Barriers and Factors that Influence Debugger Usage for Students

   Minhyuk Ko, Dibyendu Brinto Bose, Hemayet Ahmed Chowdhury, Mohammed Seyam, Chris Brown

   Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing 2023

   Abstract

   Debugging is one of the most expensive and time-consuming processes in software development. To support programmers, researchers, and developers have introduced a wide variety of debuggers or tools to automatically find errors in code, to make this process more efficient. However, there is a gap between industry developers and students regarding the skillful use of debuggers. We aim to understand this gap by studying barriers that hinder new programmers from using debuggers. We conducted a survey involving 73 students with various extents of programming experience and performed qualitative analysis. The goal was to extract insights into why students do not develop debugger usage skills. Our results suggest the general lack of academic course focus on debuggers is one of the primary reasons for avoidance. At the same time, complex user interfaces and a lack of visualization also seem intimidating for many students, making using a debugger unappealing. Based on the results, we provide guidelines to motivate future debugger designs and education materials to improve debugger usage.

2. [ICSE 2023] A Qualitative Study on the Implementation Design Decisions of Developers

   Jenny T. Liang, Maryam Arab, Minhyuk Ko, Amy Ko, Thomas LaToza

   The ACM/IEEE 45th International Conference on Software Engineering 2023

   Abstract

   Decision-making is a key software engineering skill. Developers constantly make choices throughout the software development process, from requirements to implementation. While prior work has studied developer decision-making, the choices made while choosing what solution to write in code remain understudied. In this mixed-methods study, we examine the phenomenon where developers select one specific way to implement a behavior in code, given many potential alternatives. We call these decisions implementation design decisions. Our mixed-methods study includes 46 survey responses and 14 semistructured interviews with professional developers about their decision types, considerations, processes, and expertise for implementation design decisions. We find that implementation design decisions, rather than being a natural outcome from higher levels of design, require constant monitoring of higher level design choices, such as requirements and architecture. We also show that developers have a consistent general structure to their implementation decision-making process, but no single process is exactly the same. We discuss the implications of our findings on research, education, and practice, including insights on teaching developers how to make implementation design decisions.