Design of Flexible Code Block Comparisons to Improve Code Review of Refactored Code
Heander, Lo LU
; Söderberg, Emma
LU
and Rydenfält, Christofer
LU
(2024)
10th Edition of the Programming Experience Workshop, PX/24
- Abstract
- Code review occupies a significant amount of developers’ work time and is an established practice in modern software development. Despite misaligments between users’ goals and the code review tools and processes pointed out by recent research, the code review tooling has largely stayed the same since the early 90s. Improving these tools, even slightly, has the potential for a large impact spread out over time and the large developer community. In this paper, we use the Double Diamond design process to work together with a team of industry practitioners to find, refine, prototype, and evaluate ways to make it easier to compare refactored code blocks and find previously hard-to-see changes in them.
The results show that a flexible... (More) - Code review occupies a significant amount of developers’ work time and is an established practice in modern software development. Despite misaligments between users’ goals and the code review tools and processes pointed out by recent research, the code review tooling has largely stayed the same since the early 90s. Improving these tools, even slightly, has the potential for a large impact spread out over time and the large developer community. In this paper, we use the Double Diamond design process to work together with a team of industry practitioners to find, refine, prototype, and evaluate ways to make it easier to compare refactored code blocks and find previously hard-to-see changes in them.
The results show that a flexible comparison modal integrated into Gerrit could reduce the mental load of code review on refactored code. Potentially, it could also have effects on how code is written by no longer discouraging refactoring due to it complicating the review. The user interface created in this collaborative manner was also intuitive enough for all of the participants to be able to use it
without any hints or instructions. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
https://lup.lub.lu.se/record/e579147e-ddb6-4158-a03b-86f0137fb7c6
- author
- Heander, Lo
LU
; Söderberg, Emma
LU
and Rydenfält, Christofer
LU
- organization
- publishing date
- 2024-02-28
- type
- Contribution to conference
- publication status
- in press
- subject
- keywords
- code review, collaborative design, double diamond design process, focus group
- pages
- 11 pages
- conference name
- 10th Edition of the Programming Experience Workshop, PX/24
- conference location
- Lund, Sweden
- conference dates
- 2024-03-11 - 2024-03-11
- project
- DAPPER: Seamless, Tailored Code Review
- How can code reviews be made fit-for-purpose?
- language
- English
- LU publication?
- yes
- id
- e579147e-ddb6-4158-a03b-86f0137fb7c6
- date added to LUP
- 2024-04-19 11:20:38
- date last changed
- 2024-06-20 15:14:02
@misc{e579147e-ddb6-4158-a03b-86f0137fb7c6,
abstract = {{Code review occupies a significant amount of developers’ work time and is an established practice in modern software development. Despite misaligments between users’ goals and the code review tools and processes pointed out by recent research, the code review tooling has largely stayed the same since the early 90s. Improving these tools, even slightly, has the potential for a large impact spread out over time and the large developer community. In this paper, we use the Double Diamond design process to work together with a team of industry practitioners to find, refine, prototype, and evaluate ways to make it easier to compare refactored code blocks and find previously hard-to-see changes in them.<br/>The results show that a flexible comparison modal integrated into Gerrit could reduce the mental load of code review on refactored code. Potentially, it could also have effects on how code is written by no longer discouraging refactoring due to it complicating the review. The user interface created in this collaborative manner was also intuitive enough for all of the participants to be able to use it<br/>without any hints or instructions.}},
author = {{Heander, Lo and Söderberg, Emma and Rydenfält, Christofer}},
keywords = {{code review; collaborative design; double diamond design process; focus group}},
language = {{eng}},
month = {{02}},
title = {{Design of Flexible Code Block Comparisons to Improve Code Review of Refactored Code}},
url = {{https://lup.lub.lu.se/search/files/189413834/programmingcompanion24-13.pdf}},
year = {{2024}},
}