Studying the advancement in debugging practice of professional software developers

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• 作者：Michael Perscheid ; Benjamin Siegmund ; Marcel Taeumel…
• 关键词：Debugging ; Literature review ; Field study ; Online survey
• 刊名：Software Quality Journal
• 出版年：2017
• 出版时间：March 2017
• 年：2017
• 卷：25
• 期：1
• 页码：83-110
• 全文大小：
• 刊物主题：Software Engineering/Programming and Operating Systems; Programming Languages, Compilers, Interpreters; Data Structures, Cryptology and Information Theory; Operating Systems;
• 出版者：Springer US
• ISSN：1573-1367
• 卷排序：25

文摘

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 debuggingin 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.