The Influence of Syntax Highlighting on Scanning and Reading Behaviour for Source Code

Beelders, Tanya; Plessis, J. P. Du

doi:10.1145/2987491.2987536

Cited by 14 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…The speed-accuracy tradeoff is a common finding in research on cognition [47], so it is likely that the additional time spent on imprecise VSA problems led to the accuracy improvement. 6 We also found an interaction between problem difficulty and the three VSA information conditions. Participants performed reasonably well on easier code problems when given no VSA information, but they struggled for more difficult problems, spending much more time on each problem and providing incorrect responses an average of 40% of the time.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 53%

“…In bug detection, though, experts make more vertical eye movements than novices up-front [31] and achieve faster bug detection later [35], [44]. In code or print statement characterization, experts spend more time viewing task-relevant lines of code, and they tend to focus on beacons in the code [13], but novices spend more time reading comments [6]. We are using eye tracking data to evaluate how reverse engineers will use automated analysis results to help them understand code, and whether experts and novices use those results differently.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Effects of Precise and Imprecise Value-Set Analysis (VSA) Information on Manual Code Analysis

Matzen¹,

Leger²,

Reedy³

2021

Proceedings 2021 Workshop on Binary Analysis Research

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Binary reverse engineers combine automated and manual techniques to answer questions about software. However, when evaluating automated analysis results, they rarely have additional information to help them contextualize these results in the binary. We expect that humans could more readily understand the binary program and these analysis results if they had access to information usually kept internal to the analysis, like value-set analysis (VSA) information. However, these automated analyses often give up precision for scalability, and imprecise information might hinder human decision making.To assess how precision of VSA information affects human analysts, we designed a human study in which reverse engineers answered short information flow problems, determining whether code snippets would print sensitive information. We hypothesized that precise VSA information would help our participants analyze code faster and more accurately, and that imprecise VSA information would lead to slower, less accurate performance than no VSA information. We presented hand-crafted code snippets with precise, imprecise, or no VSA information in a blocked design, recording participants' eye movements, response times, and accuracy while they analyzed the snippets. Our data showed that precise VSA information changed participants' problemsolving strategies and supported faster, more accurate analyses. However, surprisingly, imprecise VSA information also led to increased accuracy relative to no VSA information, likely due to the extra time participants spent working through the code.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 53%

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of Precise and Imprecise Value-Set Analysis (VSA) Information on Manual Code Analysis

Matzen¹,

Leger²,

Reedy³

2021

Proceedings 2021 Workshop on Binary Analysis Research

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“…We observed that often the use of EEG is combined with eye-trackers or even complementary devices, such as measuring bracelets and chest bands equipped with cardio-respiratory frequency sensors. This combination seeks to complement the measurements in scenarios where eye-tracker and EEG cannot indicate, in isolation, attributes such as stress and focused attention [6].…”

Section: Rq02: Devicesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Usage of Psychophysiological Data as an Improvement in the Context of Software Engineering: A Systematic Mapping Study

Vieira

Farias

2020

XVI Brazilian Symposium on Information Systems

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In recent years, many studies have applied wearable devices to capture psychophysiological data from software developers. However, the current literature lacks investigations that classify the studies and point out gaps to be explored. This article, therefore, seeks to present a comprehensive overview of the literature by classifying and creating a systematic map of the works. Besides, it seeks to pinpoint research gaps, challenges, and trends. Based on widely known guidelines, a systematic mapping of the literature was designed and run to answer eight research questions. After applying a careful filtering process, we selected 27 representative studies from a sample of 2,084 potentially relevant works retrieved from seven digital libraries. The main results are: a classification scheme of the published studies was produced; there is no predominance of the devices used to capture psychophysiological data; over 50% of the studies have explored indicators related to mental states and neural activity; and 80% have analyzed composite data to understand the cognitive load and in the context of understanding debugging programs and strategies. Our findings can benefit researchers and students by creating a systematic map of the literature, being a starting point for future research.

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“…Tools such as Visual Studio, Eclipse, Netbeans, IntelleJ, PyCharm, Xcode, and others [16][17][18][19][20][21] provide a wide range of features to make the developer more productive. These include syntax highlighting [22], which involves highlighting various constructs and keywords with colors and formatting to identify their function and usage. These tools can aid the programmer by identifying errors in code when the color-coding of the source code does not match their intent.…”

Section: Integrated Development Environmentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Programmer Productivity Enhancement Through Controlled Natural Language Input

Dittmer¹,

Jia²

2020

IJSEA

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We have created CABERNET, a Controlled Nature Language (CNL) based approach to program creation. CABERNET allows programmers to use a simple outline-based syntax. This allows increased programmer efficiency and syntax flexibility. CNLs have successfully been used for writing requirements documents. We propose taking this approach well beyond this to fully functional programs. Through the use of heuristics and inference to analyze and determine the programmer's intent we are able to create fully functional mobile applications. The goal is for programs to be aligned with the way that the humans think rather than the way computers process information. Through the use of templates a CABERNET application can be processed to run on multiple run time environments. Because processing of a CABERNET program file results in native application program performance is maintained.

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The Influence of Syntax Highlighting on Scanning and Reading Behaviour for Source Code

Cited by 14 publications

References 22 publications

Effects of Precise and Imprecise Value-Set Analysis (VSA) Information on Manual Code Analysis

Effects of Precise and Imprecise Value-Set Analysis (VSA) Information on Manual Code Analysis

Usage of Psychophysiological Data as an Improvement in the Context of Software Engineering: A Systematic Mapping Study

Programmer Productivity Enhancement Through Controlled Natural Language Input

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