A Metadata Handling API for Framework Development

Guerra, Eduardo; Lima, Phyllipe; Choma, Joelma; Nardes, Marco; Silva, Tiago; Lanza, Michele; Meirelles, Paulo

doi:10.1145/3422392.3422428

Cited by 6 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 17 publications

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“…Finally, a third researcher inspected the classification. Our findings aim to complement results from the literature (Guerra and Fernandes, 2013;Guerra et al, 2020), understanding the rationale for preferring or not annotations.…”

Section: Survey Recruitment and Analysismentioning

confidence: 51%

“…However, we also recognize that readability is very subjective, and the participants could consider anything in their judgment. So, this qualitative analysis adds to the current literature (Guerra and Fernandes, 2013;Guerra et al, 2020) by bringing some additional information from spontaneous manifestations of the participants about the readability of annotated code, being their reasons directed related to readability or not.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 97%

“…A recent experiment about framework development compared the usage of an annotation-based API to another based on object orientation for metadata reading (Guerra et al, 2020). The results showed a more consistent behavior in the evolution of coupling and complexity metrics when using the annotationbased approach, but they did not find significant differences in productivity.…”

Section: Annotated Code Assessmentmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…In conclusion, based on the studies found in the literature, from the positive side, the usage of annotations can reduce coupling (Guerra and Fernandes, 2013), provide a more consistent evolution (Guerra et al, 2020), and potentially improve code quality (Yu et al, 2019). On the other hand, the studies showed abuses in their application related to size (Lima et al, 2018) and repetition (Teixeira et al, 2018).…”

Section: Annotated Code Assessmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

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How does annotations affect Java code readability?

Guerra

Gomes

Ferreira

et al. 2022

Preprint

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Context: Code annotation is a feature to define custom metadata about programming elements. Many modern frameworks and APIs use annotations to keep integration less verbose and closer to the corresponding code element. However, contrary to the initial intent, practitioners often complain about the negative impacts of annotations on code readability. Objective: We conducted a survey where participants compared the readability of code snippets with and without annotations to understand this perception further. Method: We designed the code snippet pairs considering five different usage categories for annotations present on frameworks and APIs used on real-world projects. Results: The survey received 338 valid answers from diverse participants. Surprisingly, the answers to all the questions had a normal distribution, and none of them revealed a scenario in which the usage of code annotations could be considered better or worse for readability. Additionally, we could not find a correlation between any aspect of the participants' programming or annotation-related experience and their answers. We also found biased perceptions in favor or against annotations. Our qualitative analysis also revealed contrasting opinions about the effects on code readability. Participants praised the impacts on design, maintainability, and productivity. However, understandability and code clarity had contrasting views. Conclusions: Developers and API designers can use our results when deciding whether to use annotations, considering there is no evidence of a generally positive or negative impact on readability and the existence of biased views, even with a personal bias that might suggest differently.

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Section: Survey Recruitment and Analysismentioning

confidence: 51%

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 97%

Section: Annotated Code Assessmentmentioning

confidence: 98%

Section: Annotated Code Assessmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

How does annotations affect Java code readability?

Guerra

Gomes

Ferreira

et al. 2022

Preprint

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…In a recent experiment about framework development, we compared the usage of an annotation-based API to another based on object-orientation for metadata reading [19]. The results showed a more consistent behavior in the evolution of coupling and complexity metrics when using the annotation-based approach, but they did not find significant differences in productivity.…”

Section: Annotation Assessmentmentioning

confidence: 95%

Towards Visualizing Code Annotations Distribution

Lima¹,

Guerra²,

Meirelles³

2020

Anais Do XI Computer on the Beach - COTB '20

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Java developers make extensive use of code annotations sincetheir introduction in version 5 of the language. They areinserted directly on the source code for custom metadata configuration,similar to C# attributes. The software engineeringcommunity has few works investigating their usage and impacton source code. Being able to visualize characteristics ofcode annotations might aid developers in detecting potentialmisuse, outliers as well as increase the comprehensibility andreadability of the source code. In this paper, we present anapproach to use software metrics to generate a 2D polymetricview targeting the visualization of code annotations in Javaclasses. We developed a prototype tool using the Unity GameEngine. It displays classes and packages as rectangles andannotations as circles. We demonstrated the tool with a smallsample Java program.

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