Large Language Models for Software Engineering: Survey and Open Problems

This paper provides a survey of the emerging area of Large Language Models (LLMs) for Software Engineering (SE). It also sets out open research challenges for the application of LLMs to technical problems faced by software engineers. LLMs' emergent properties bring novelty and creativity with applications right across the spectrum of Software Engineering activities including coding, design, requirements, repair, refactoring, performance improvement, documentation and analytics. However, these very same emergent properties also pose significant technical challenges; we need techniques that can reliably weed out incorrect solutions, such as hallucinations. Our survey reveals the pivotal role that hybrid techniques (traditional SE plus LLMs) have to play in the development and deployment of reliable, efficient and effective LLM-based SE

Systematic review on which analytics and learning methodologies are applied in primary and secondary education in the learning of robotics sensors

Robotics technology has become increasingly common both for businesses and for private citizens. Primary and secondary schools, as a mirror of societal evolution, have increasingly integrated science, technology, engineering and math concepts into their curricula. Our research questions are: “In teaching robotics to primary and secondary school students, which pedagogical-methodological interventions result in better understanding and knowledge in the use of sensors in educational robotics?”, and “In teaching robotics to primary and secondary school students, which analytical methods related to Learning Analytics processes are proposed to analyze and reflect on students’ behavior in their learning of concepts and skills of sensors in educational robotics?”. To answer these questions, we have carried out a systematic review of the literature in the Web of Science and Scopus databases regarding robotics sensors in primary and secondary education, and Learning Analytics processes. We applied PRISMA methodology and reviewed a total of 24 articles. The results show a consensus about the use of the Learning by Doing and Project-Based Learning methodologies, including their different variations, as the most common methodology for achieving optimal engagement, motivation and performance in students’ learning. Finally, future lines of research are identified from this study.This research was co-funded by the support of the Secretaria d’Universitats i Recerca of the Department of Business and Knowledge of the Generalitat de Catalunya with the help of 2017 SGR 93

A Decade of Code Comment Quality Assessment: A Systematic Literature Review

Code comments are important artifacts in software systems and play a paramount role in many software engineering (SE) tasks related to maintenance and program comprehension. However, while it is widely accepted that high quality matters in code comments just as it matters in source code, assessing comment quality in practice is still an open problem. First and foremost, there is no unique definition of quality when it comes to evaluating code comments. The few existing studies on this topic rather focus on specific attributes of quality that can be easily quantified and measured. Existing techniques and corresponding tools may also focus on comments bound to a specific programming language, and may only deal with comments with specific scopes and clear goals (e.g., Javadoc comments at the method level, or in-body comments describing TODOs to be addressed). In this paper, we present a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) of the last decade of research in SE to answer the following research questions: (i) What types of comments do researchers focus on when assessing comment quality? (ii) What quality attributes (QAs) do they consider? (iii) Which tools and techniques do they use to assess comment quality?, and (iv) How do they evaluate their studies on comment quality assessment in general? Our evaluation, based on the analysis of 2353 papers and the actual review of 47 relevant ones, shows that (i) most studies and techniques focus on comments in Java code, thus may not be generalizable to other languages, and (ii) the analyzed studies focus on four main QAs of a total of 21 QAs identified in the literature, with a clear predominance of checking consistency between comments and the code. We observe that researchers rely on manual assessment and specific heuristics rather than the automated assessment of the comment quality attributes

Bridging Course: Why, How, and First Impressions

The knowledge gap between high school and university level mathematics is a persistent issue that hinders students in their academic career. Freshman Civil Engineering students at the University of Twente, Netherlands struggle with passing entry level Calculus courses. In 2022, the programme introduced a workshop to help students put their prerequisite knowledge to the test; still, many students could not pass these courses. Capitalising on the idea behind this workshop, a fully digital course was introduced in 2023. In this research we dive into the design of the contents of this course. Furthermore, we investigate its impact on student performance with respect to previous years using a qualitative approach: interviews with second year students provide, to this avail, a valuable comparison

Vision, challenges and opportunities for a Plant Cell Atlas

With growing populations and pressing environmental problems, future economies will be increasingly plant-based. Now is the time to reimagine plant science as a critical component of fundamental science, agriculture, environmental stewardship, energy, technology and healthcare. This effort requires a conceptual and technological framework to identify and map all cell types, and to comprehensively annotate the localization and organization of molecules at cellular and tissue levels. This framework, called the Plant Cell Atlas (PCA), will be critical for understanding and engineering plant development, physiology and environmental responses. A workshop was convened to discuss the purpose and utility of such an initiative, resulting in a roadmap that acknowledges the current knowledge gaps and technical challenges, and underscores how the PCA initiative can help to overcome them

Technical Debt is an Ethical Issue

We introduce the problem of technical debt, with particular focus on critical infrastructure, and put forward our view that this is a digital ethics issue. We propose that the software engineering process must adapt its current notion of technical debt – focusing on technical costs – to include the potential cost to society if the technical debt is not addressed, and the cost of analysing, modelling and understanding this ethical debt. Finally, we provide an overview of the development of educational material – based on a collection of technical debt case studies - in order to teach about technical debt and its ethical implication

Vision, challenges and opportunities for a Plant Cell Atlas

With growing populations and pressing environmental problems, future economies will be increasingly plant-based. Now is the time to reimagine plant science as a critical component of fundamental science, agriculture, environmental stewardship, energy, technology and healthcare. This effort requires a conceptual and technological framework to identify and map all cell types, and to comprehensively annotate the localization and organization of molecules at cellular and tissue levels. This framework, called the Plant Cell Atlas (PCA), will be critical for understanding and engineering plant development, physiology and environmental responses. A workshop was convened to discuss the purpose and utility of such an initiative, resulting in a roadmap that acknowledges the current knowledge gaps and technical challenges, and underscores how the PCA initiative can help to overcome them.National Science Foundation 1916797 David W Ehrhardt, Kenneth D Birnbaum, Seung Yon Rhee; National Science Foundation 2052590 Seung Yon Rhe

Service-Dominant Business Model Design for Digital Innovation in Smart Mobility

In many business domains, rapid changes have occurred as a consequence of digital innovation, i.e., the application of novel information technologies to achieve specific business goals. A domain where digital innovation has great potential is smart mobility, which aims at moving around large sets of people and goods in a specific geographic setting in an efficient and effective way. So far, many innovations in this domain have concentrated on relatively isolated, technology-driven developments, such as smart route planning for individual travelers. Nice as they are, they have relatively small impact on mobility on a large scale. To achieve substantial digital innovations – for example, optimizing commuting on a city-scale – it is necessary to align the efforts and related values of a spectrum of stakeholders that need to collaborate in a common business model. To this aim, the study proposes the use of service-dominant business logic, which emphasizes the interaction of value network partners as they co-create value through collaborative processes. Moving to this paradigm has significant implications on the way business is done: the business requirements for services will change faster, and the complexity of value networks required to meet these requirements will increase further. This requires new approaches to business engineering that are grounded in the premises of service-dominant logic. The paper introduces the service-dominant business model radar (SDBM/R) as an integral component of a business engineering framework. Following a design science approach, the SDBM/R has been developed in close collaboration with industry experts and evaluated through an extensive series of hands-on workshops with industry professionals from several business domains. This paper focuses on the application and evaluation in the smart mobility domain, addressing the design of new business models for digital innovation of collaborative transport of people and goods. In summary, it contributes a novel business design approach that has an academic background and relevant practical embedding