TY - JOUR A1 - Perscheid, Michael A1 - Siegmund, Benjamin A1 - Taeumel, Marcel A1 - Hirschfeld, Robert T1 - Studying the advancement in debugging practice of professional software developers JF - Software Quality Journal N2 - In 1997, Henry Lieberman stated that debugging is the dirty little secret of computer science. Since then, several promising debugging technologies have been developed such as back-in-time debuggers and automatic fault localization methods. However, the last study about the state-of-the-art in debugging is still more than 15 years old and so it is not clear whether these new approaches have been applied in practice or not. For that reason, we investigate the current state of debugging in a comprehensive study. First, we review the available literature and learn about current approaches and study results. Second, we observe several professional developers while debugging and interview them about their experiences. Third, we create a questionnaire that serves as the basis for a larger online debugging survey. Based on these results, we present new insights into debugging practice that help to suggest new directions for future research. KW - Debugging KW - Literature review KW - Field study KW - Online survey Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s11219-015-9294-2 SN - 0963-9314 SN - 1573-1367 VL - 25 SP - 83 EP - 110 PB - Springer CY - Dordrecht ER - TY - BOOK A1 - Niephaus, Fabio A1 - Felgentreff, Tim A1 - Hirschfeld, Robert T1 - Squimera BT - a live, Smalltalk-based IDE for dynamic programming languages N2 - Programmierwerkzeuge, die verschiedene Programmiersprachen unterstützen und sich konsistent bedienen lassen, sind hilfreich für Softwareentwickler, weil diese sich nicht erst mit neuen Werkzeugen vertraut machen müssen, wenn sie in einer neuen Sprache entwickeln wollen. Außerdem ist es nützlich, verschiedene Programmiersprachen in einer Anwendung kombinieren zu können, da Entwickler dann Softwareframeworks und -bibliotheken nicht in der jeweiligen Sprache nachbauen müssen und stattdessen bestehende Software wiederverwenden können. Dennoch haben Entwickler eine sehr große Auswahl, wenn sie nach Werkzeugen suchen, die teilweise zudem speziell nur für eine Sprache ausgelegt sind. Einige integrierte Entwicklungsumgebungen unterstützen verschiedene Programmiersprachen, können aber häufig keine konsistente Bedienung ihrer Werkzeuge gewährleisten, da die jeweiligen Ausführungsumgebungen der Sprachen zu verschieden sind. Darüber hinaus gibt es bereits Mechansimen, die es erlauben, Programme aus anderen Sprachen in einem Programm wiederzuverwenden. Dazu werden häufig das Betriebssystem oder eine Netzwerkverbindung verwendet. Programmierwerkzeuge unterstützen jedoch häufig eine solche Indirektion nicht und sind deshalb nur eingeschränkt nutzbar bei beispielsweise Debugging Szenarien. In dieser Arbeit stellen wir einen neuartigen Ansatz vor, der das Programmiererlebnis in Bezug auf das Arbeiten mit mehreren dynamischen Programmiersprachen verbessern soll. Dazu verwenden wir die Werkzeuge einer Smalltalk Programmierumgebung wieder und entwickeln eine virtuelle Ausführungsumgebung, die verschiedene Sprachen gleichermaßen unterstützt. Der auf unserem Ansatz basierende Prototyp Squimera demonstriert, dass es möglich ist, Programmierwerkzeuge in der Art wiederzuverwenden, sodass sie sich für verschiedene Programmiersprachen gleich verhalten und somit die Arbeit für Entwickler vereinfachen. Außerdem ermöglicht Squimera einfaches Wiederverwenden und darüber hinaus das Verschmischen von in unterschiedlichen Sprachen geschriebenen Softwarebibliotheken und -frameworks und erlaubt dabei zusätzlich Debugging über mehrere Sprachen hinweg. N2 - Software development tools that work and behave consistently across different programming languages are helpful for developers, because they do not have to familiarize themselves with new tooling whenever they decide to use a new language. Also, being able to combine multiple programming languages in a program increases reusability, as developers do not have to recreate software frameworks and libraries in the language they develop in and can reuse existing software instead. However, developers often have a broad choice with regard to tools, some of which are designed for only one specific programming language. Various Integrated Development Environments have support for multiple languages, but are usually unable to provide a consistent programming experience due to different features of language runtimes. Furthermore, common mechanisms that allow reuse of software written in other languages usually use the operating system or a network connection as the abstract layer. Tools, however, often cannot support such indirections well and are therefore less useful in debugging scenarios for example. In this report, we present a novel approach that aims to improve the programming experience with regard to working with multiple high-level programming languages. As part of this approach, we reuse the tools of a Smalltalk programming environment for other languages and build a multi-language virtual execution environment which is able to provide the same runtime capabilities for all languages. The prototype system Squimera is an implementation of our approach and demonstrates that it is possible to reuse development tools, so that they behave in the same way across all supported programming languages. In addition, it provides convenient means to reuse and even mix software libraries and frameworks written in different languages without breaking the debugging experience. T3 - Technische Berichte des Hasso-Plattner-Instituts für Digital Engineering an der Universität Potsdam - 120 KW - Programmiererlebnis KW - integrierte Entwicklungsumgebungen KW - mehrsprachige Ausführungsumgebungen KW - Interpreter KW - Debugging KW - Smalltalk KW - Python KW - Ruby KW - programming experience KW - integrated development environments KW - polyglot execution environments KW - interpreters KW - debugging KW - small talk KW - Python KW - Ruby Y1 - 2017 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-403387 SN - 978-3-86956-422-7 IS - 120 PB - Universitätsverlag Potsdam CY - Potsdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Steinert, Bastian A1 - Cassou, Damien A1 - Hirschfeld, Robert T1 - CoExist overcoming aversion to change preserving immediate access to source code and run-time information of previous development states JF - ACM SIGPLAN notices N2 - Programmers make many changes to the program to eventually find a good solution for a given task. In this course of change, every intermediate development state can of value, when, for example, a promising ideas suddenly turn out inappropriate or the interplay of objects turns out more complex than initially expected before making changes. Programmers would benefit from tool support that provides immediate access to source code and run-time of previous development states of interest. We present IDE extensions, implemented for Squeak/Smalltalk, to preserve, retrieve, and work with this information. With such tool support, programmers can work without worries because they can rely on tools that help them with whatever their explorations will reveal. They no longer have to follow certain best practices only to avoid undesired consequences of changing code. KW - Design KW - Experimentation KW - Human Factors KW - Continuous Testing KW - Continuous Versioning KW - Debugging KW - Evolution KW - Explore-first Programming KW - Fault Localization KW - Prototyping Y1 - 2013 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1145/2480360.2384591 SN - 0362-1340 VL - 48 IS - 2 SP - 107 EP - 117 PB - Association for Computing Machinery CY - New York ER -