Code Compass: A Study on the Challenges of Navigating Unfamiliar Codebases
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arXiv
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| Auteurs principaux: | , , , , , , |
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| Format: | Preprint |
| Publié: |
2024
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| _version_ | 1866909197510115328 |
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| author | Agrawal, Ekansh Alam, Omair Goenka, Chetan Iyer, Medha Moise, Isabela Pandian, Ashish Paul, Bren |
| author_facet | Agrawal, Ekansh Alam, Omair Goenka, Chetan Iyer, Medha Moise, Isabela Pandian, Ashish Paul, Bren |
| contents | In our research, we investigate the challenges that software engineers face during program comprehension, particularly when debugging unfamiliar codebases. We propose a novel tool, CodeCompass, to address these issues. Our study highlights a significant gap in current tools and methodologies, especially the difficulty developers encounter in effectively utilizing documentation alongside code exploration. CodeCompass tackles these challenges by seamlessly integrating documentation within the IDE, offering context-aware suggestions and visualizations that streamline the debugging process. Our formative study demonstrates how effectively the tool reduces the time developers spend navigating documentation, thereby enhancing code comprehension and task completion rates. Future work will focus on automating the process of annotating codebases, creating sandbox tasks, and providing dynamic support. These innovations could potentially transform software development practices by improving the accessibility and efficiency of program comprehension tools. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2405_06271 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2024 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Code Compass: A Study on the Challenges of Navigating Unfamiliar Codebases Agrawal, Ekansh Alam, Omair Goenka, Chetan Iyer, Medha Moise, Isabela Pandian, Ashish Paul, Bren Software Engineering Human-Computer Interaction In our research, we investigate the challenges that software engineers face during program comprehension, particularly when debugging unfamiliar codebases. We propose a novel tool, CodeCompass, to address these issues. Our study highlights a significant gap in current tools and methodologies, especially the difficulty developers encounter in effectively utilizing documentation alongside code exploration. CodeCompass tackles these challenges by seamlessly integrating documentation within the IDE, offering context-aware suggestions and visualizations that streamline the debugging process. Our formative study demonstrates how effectively the tool reduces the time developers spend navigating documentation, thereby enhancing code comprehension and task completion rates. Future work will focus on automating the process of annotating codebases, creating sandbox tasks, and providing dynamic support. These innovations could potentially transform software development practices by improving the accessibility and efficiency of program comprehension tools. |
| title | Code Compass: A Study on the Challenges of Navigating Unfamiliar Codebases |
| topic | Software Engineering Human-Computer Interaction |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.06271 |