Banca de QUALIFICAÇÃO: BENEDITO FERNANDO ALBUQUERQUE DE OLIVEIRA

Uma banca de QUALIFICAÇÃO DE MESTRADO foi cadastrada pelo programa.

DISCENTE: BENEDITO FERNANDO ALBUQUERQUE DE OLIVEIRA
DATA: 05/06/2019
HORA: 10:00
LOCAL: Instituto de Computação
TÍTULO:

Atoms of Confusion Do Really Cause Confusion? A Controlled Experiment Using Eye Tracking

RESUMO:

Atoms of confusion are small pieces of code, such as ternary operator and logic as control flow, which can cause a considerable increase on code understanding efforts. Previous studies have used Eye Tracking devices to conduct experiments in order to investigate code comprehension and its relation with some important concepts on software engineering, like bad smells and variability in software product lines. This study aims to evaluate whether the presence of atoms of confusion in code increases its understanding effort or not. To validate this assumption we conducted a controlled experiment using an Eye Tracker to allow us to see in what part of the code developers fix their eyes for most. Previous works on Psychology have indicated that a longer fixation time in a particular word or a set of words indicates the need for a increased cognitive load for the correct understanding of the exposed text. To conduct the experiment we selected six functions containing atoms of three different kinds in real Github's repositories, two functions for each kind of atom. The atoms on the experiment were Dangling Else, Conditional Operator and Assignment as a Value. The functions were modified to remove project's specific resources but the structure of the atoms were kept the same. We executed the experiment with both undergraduate and graduate student and with market professionals, having been executed in full with 30 developers. We divided the functions in two sets, each one containing three functions, each functions with one of the selected atom's kind. Each function was refactored in order to compare the developers' performance between functions with and without atom, to do this we randomly generated Latin Squares. Each function has some printf statements and developers were asked to answer the output of 6 functions, 3 with atoms and 3 without atoms. A system was also developed to perform the experiment, this system allow as to register a experiment along side with their tasks, generate latin squares and perform the tasks. It also store all needed data to validate this experiment such as task duration, pauses duration, errors count, tries count and points gathered by the Eye Tracker device. The preliminary results confirm the increase in the difficulty of understanding the code that contains the atom of confusion. As a next step, a software library will be developed to indicate the presence of atoms of confusion and suggest their refactorings.

PALAVRAS-CHAVE:

Eye Tracking, Atoms of Confusion, Code Comprehension

PÁGINAS: 40
GRANDE ÁREA: Ciências Exatas e da Terra
ÁREA: Ciência da Computação
SUBÁREA: Metodologia e Técnicas da Computação
ESPECIALIDADE: Engenharia de Software

MEMBROS DA BANCA:
Presidente - 1741806 - MARCIO DE MEDEIROS RIBEIRO
Interno(a) - 1963609 - BALDOINO FONSECA DOS SANTOS NETO
Externo(a) à Instituição - ROHIT GHEYI - UFCG