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  -