Journal article
How Programmers Debug, Revisited: An Information Foraging Theory Perspective
IEEE transactions on software engineering, Vol.39(2), pp.197-215
02/01/2013
DOI: 10.1109/TSE.2010.111
Abstract
Many theories of human debugging rely on complex mental constructs that offer little practical advice to builders of software engineering tools. Although hypotheses are important in debugging, a theory of navigation adds more practical value to our understanding of how programmers debug. Therefore, in this paper, we reconsider how people go about debugging in large collections of source code using a modern programming environment. We present an information foraging theory of debugging that treats programmer navigation during debugging as being analogous to a predator following scent to find prey in the wild. The theory proposes that constructs of scent and topology provide enough information to describe and predict programmer navigation during debugging, without reference to mental states such as hypotheses. We investigate the scope of our theory through an empirical study of 10 professional programmers debugging a real-world open source program. We found that the programmers' verbalizations far more often concerned scent-following than hypotheses. To evaluate the predictiveness of our theory, we created an executable model that predicted programmer navigation behavior more accurately than comparable models that did not consider information scent. Finally, we discuss the implications of our results for enhancing software engineering tools.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- How Programmers Debug, Revisited: An Information Foraging Theory Perspective
- Creators
- Joseph Lawrance - Wentworth Institute of TechnologyChristopher Bogart - Oregon State UniversityMargaret Burnett - Oregon State UniversityRachel Bellamy - IBM TJ Watson Res Ctr, Yorktown Hts, NY USAKyle Rector - University of WashingtonScott D. Fleming - University of Memphis
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Publication Details
- IEEE transactions on software engineering, Vol.39(2), pp.197-215
- Publisher
- IEEE
- DOI
- 10.1109/TSE.2010.111
- ISSN
- 0098-5589
- eISSN
- 1939-3520
- Number of pages
- 19
- Grant note
- ITR-0325273 / EUSES Consortium via NSF J. Lawrance's IBM PhD Scholarship; International Business Machines (IBM) IBM International Faculty Award; International Business Machines (IBM) FA9550-09-1-0213 / US Air Force Office of Scientific Research; United States Department of Defense; Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR)
- Language
- English
- Date published
- 02/01/2013
- Academic Unit
- Computer Science
- Record Identifier
- 9984259463802771
Metrics
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