Program comprehension is a vital skill in software development. This work investigates program by examining the eye movement of novice programmers as they gain programming experience over duration Java course. Their behavior compared to expert programmers. Eye studies natural text show that word frequency and length influence act indicators reading skill. The study uses an existing longitudinal tracking dataset with 20 experienced readers source code. acquisition effects token code...

Software developers use Stack Overflow on a daily basis to search for solutions problems they encounter during bug fixing and feature enhancement. In prior work, studies have been done mining data such as predicting unanswered questions or how why people post. However, no work exists actually use, more importantly, read the information presented them Overflow. To better understand this behavior, we conduct an eye tracking study seek while tasked with creating human-readable summaries of...

The paper presents an eye tracking study with 17 students (12 novices, 5 non-novices) reading C++ methods. novices were who participated in the during last week of their semester learning C++. non-novices senior had been exposed to programming before. We report on behavior three methods that use different language constructs. analyze fixations at line level code using visualizations derive insights into reading. Results show most transitions made lines are close current read. observe a large...

The paper partially replicates and extends a previous study by Busjahn et al. [4] on the factors influencing dwell time during source code reading, where element type frequency of gaze visits are studied as factors. Unlike study, this focuses analyzing eye movement data in large open Java projects. Five experts thirteen novices participated main task is to summarize methods. results examine semantic line-level information that developers view summarization. We find no correlation between...

The evolution and effort in designing implementing iTrace, an infrastructure for integrating eye tracking into developer environments, is presented. goal to make practical various stakeholders software engineering namely researchers, practitioners, educators. An overview of iTrace the general process involved conducting study with human subjects using presented this tool demo paper. Upcoming features ongoing plans community involvement are also

Eye tracking tools are used in software engineering research to study various development activities. However, a major limitation of these is their inability track gaze data for activities that involve source code editing. We present novel solution support eye experiments tasks involving edits as an extension the iTrace [9] community infrastructure. introduce iTrace-Atom plugin and gazel [g@"zel]-a Python processing pipeline maps information changing elements provides researchers with way...

Stack Overflow is commonly used by software developers to help solve problems they face while working on tasks such as fixing bugs or building new features. Recent research has explored how the content of posts affects attraction and reputation users attracts more visitors. However, there very little evidence effect that visual attractors quantity have directing gaze toward parts a post, which hold attention user longer. Moreover, known about these (students professionals) answer...

Background and Context: Understanding how a student programmer solves different task types in programming languages is essential to understanding we can further improve teaching tools support students be industry-ready when they graduate. It also provides insight into students’ thought processes languages. Few (if any) studies investigate whether any differences exist between the reading navigation behavior while completing of tasks Objectives: We use certain language (C++ versus Python)...

The paper introduces a fundamental technological problem with collecting high-speed eye tracking data while studying software engineering tasks in an integrated development environment. use of trackers is quickly becoming important means to study developers and how they comprehend source code locate bugs. High quality can record upwards 120 300 gaze points per second. However, it not possible map each these line column position file (in the presence scrolling switching) real time at rates...

Polyglot programming, the use of multiple programming languages during development process, is common practice in modern software development. This study investigates this through a randomized controlled trial conducted under context database programming. Participants were given coding tasks written Java and one three SQL-like embedded languages. One was plain SQL strings, only, third hybrid language that closer to host language. We recorded 109 valid data points. Results showed significant...

Eye tracking is a frequently used technique to collect data capturing users' strategies and behaviors in processing information. Understanding how programmers navigate through large number of classes methods find bugs important educators practitioners software engineering. However, the eye collected on realistic codebases massive compared traditional one static page. The same content may appear different areas screen with users scrolling an Integrated Development Environment (IDE)....

Polyglot programming is the practice of using multiple languages in same project. While many developers use this polyglot programming, its effect on remains largely unexplored literature. In extended abstract, I present preliminary efforts to provide empirical evidence explain these effects eye tracking a randomized controlled trial study. 31 participants completed tasks three different language variants. The results show that for certain tasks, variants produced significant difference gaze...

Writing readable source code is generally considered good practice because it reduces comprehension time for both the original developer and others that have to read maintain it. We conducted a readability rating study using eye tracking equipment as part of larger project where we compared pairs Java methods side by side. The were written such one followed rule other did not. participants tasked with which method they be more readable. An explanation was also optionally provided. Eye data...

Studies of eye movements during source code reading have supported the idea that differs fundamentally from natural text. The paper analyzed an existing data set language and movement using E-Z reader model control. results show can be used with text where it provides good predictions duration. This result is confirmed by comparing to eye-movement this experiment calculating correlation score for each metric. Finally, was found gaze duration influenced token frequency in effect less...

The paper presents results from a pilot questionnaire-based study on ten Stack Overflow (SO) questions. Eleven developers were tasked with determining if the SO question sentiment was positive, negative or neutral. questionnaire indicate that mostly rated of questions as neutral, stating they received little no emotional feedback Tools designed to analyze Software Engineering related texts (SentiStrength-SE, SentiCR, and Senti4SD) average more closely aligned developer ratings for majority...