Trends on empty exception handlers for Java open source libraries

Nogueira, Ana Filipa; Ribeiro, José Carlos Bregieiro; Zenha-Rela, Mario

doi:10.1109/saner.2017.7884644

Cited by 4 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 6 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…The online instrument was intended to see if developers of the XSA system know the most recurring anti-patterns in the source code they implement. The study of Palomba et al [31] served as the basis for the questionnaire construction. The Palomba et al also aimed to investigate developers' perceptions about the relationship between bad smells and low-quality planning or implementation.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Studying the evolution of exception handling anti-patterns in a long-lived large-scale project

et al. 2020

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Exception handling is a well-known technique used to improve software robustness. However, recent studies report that developers typically neglect exception handling (mostly novice ones). We believe the quality of exception handling code in a software project is directly affected (i) by the absence, or lack of awareness, of an explicit exception handling policy and guidelines and (ii) by a silent rising of exception handling anti-patterns. In this paper, we investigate this phenomenon in a case study of a long-lived large-scale Java Web system in a Public Education Institution, trying to better understand the relationship between (i) and (ii), and the impact of developers' turnover, skills, and guidance in (ii). Our case study takes into account the technical and human aspects. As a first step, we surveyed 21 developers regarding their perception of exception handling in the system's institution. Next, we analysed the evolution of exception handling anti-patterns across 15 releases of the target system. We conducted a semi-structured interview with three senior software engineers, representatives of the development team, to present partial results of the case and raise possible causes for the found problems. The interviewed professionals and a second analysis of the code identified the high team turnover as the source of this phenomenon, since the public procurement process for hiring new developers has mostly attracted novice ones. These findings suggest that the absence of an explicit exception handling policy impacts negatively in the developers' perception and implementation of exception handling. Furthermore, the absence of such policy has been leading developers to replicate existing anti-patterns and spread them through new features added during system evolution. We also observed that most developers have low skills regarding exception handling in general and low knowledge regarding the design and implementation of exception handling in the system. The system maintainer now has a diagnosis of the major causes of the quality problems in the exception handling code and was able to lead the required measures to repair this technical debt.

show abstract

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Studying the evolution of exception handling anti-patterns in a long-lived large-scale project

et al. 2020

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Three papers and the thesis of Pádua et al [15], [16], [17], [18] cite our article when discussing the importance of exception handling code. Similarly to our article, 19 different papers focus on bugs in the exception handling code [19], [20], [21], [22], [23], [24], [15], [25], [26], [27], [17], [14], [28], [18], [29], [30], [31], [32], [13]. Our categorization of exception handling bugs and their causes has been (partially) used in five different studies [20], [15], [26], [33], [18] The survey we conducted in our article also served as a basis for surveys by de Sousa [13], [34].…”

Section: Impactsmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…Nogueira et al [28] conducted a study focusing specifically on gaining a better understanding about empty catch blocks. They investigated how empty catch blocks evolve within the software releases and also which types of exceptions these blocks handle.…”

Section: A Have Other Papers Followed Up?mentioning

confidence: 99%