Projects

SACI: Semi-Autonomous Code Improvement Period: Jan 2024 - Dec 2028 PI: Emma Söderberg, Lund University Funding: WASP

Large software code bases are commonplace today. Often, the sheer mass of code can obscure functionality to developers. Left untouched, the quality and value of software will decrease - a phenomenon known as technical debt. Code needs to be continuously updated to adapt to changes in the environment. Adapting and refactoring code to a new environment is non-trivial. Finding the first solution for a problem takes time, then the same solution typically needs to be propagated through the code base. These solutions can be described as refactorings, where you transform from one code pattern to a new code pattern without changing the external behavior of the software. Propagation of refactoring changes presents an opportunity for semi-automated code updates. This is what we want to explore in the SACI project. [More info]

DAPPER: Seamless, Tailored Code Review Period: Jan 2023 - Dec 2027 PI: Emma Söderberg, Lund University Funding: WASP

Code review is a significant activity within modern professional software development, where it has been widely accepted as an essential part of professional practice and is one of the key collaborative activities that occur within teams of developers. However, despite this key role in software development and organisational practice, it is a relatively under characterised activity, especially with regard to the developer experience and to what extent tools are supporting the code review process. In our past work in this area, we have seen mismatches in the tasks the developers are doing and the information they have available, leading to unnecessary social tensions in teams. We see issues embedded in the code review tooling, with the most fundamental one being a repeat of the superlativist assumption that there is one workflow and tool that is best independent of context. We hypothesise that this one size fits all assumption lies at the heart of many of the problems. In this project, we seek to expand on this preliminary empirical data and the experimental platform we have built to ask the question: “how can code reviews be made fit for purpose? [More info]

ADAPT: Adaptive Developer Tools Period: Jan 2020 - March 2025 PI: Emma Söderberg, Lund University Funding: Vetenskapsrådet (project-id: 2019-05658), SSF (project-id: FFL18-0231)

Program analysis aims to assist with development of high quality software. However, software developers are having usability issues with program analysis results and are missing out on potentially useful information. The purpose of this project is to explore how adaptive developer tools can make program analysis more useful. [More info]

GANDER: Gazing at Code Review(s) Period: Jan 2021 - Dec 2023 PI: Emma Söderberg, Lund University Funding: ELLIIT

Developers are spending a lot of time trying to understand and review other developers' code. We want to simplify this task. In this project, we aim to explore how eye-tracking (measuring what engineers look at and in what order) can be used to provide developer tools that can adapt to the current needs of a developer in a specific context. [More info]