Automated Refactoring of Legacy Java Software to Default Methods

Java 8 default methods, which allow interfaces to contain (instance) method implementations, are useful for the skeletal implementation software design pattern. However, it is not easy to transform existing software to exploit default methods as it requires analyzing complex type hierarchies, resolving multiple implementation inheritance issues, reconciling differences between class and interface methods, and analyzing tie-breakers (dispatch precedence) with overriding class methods to preserve type-correctness and confirm semantics preservation. In this paper, we present an efficient, fully-automated, type constraint-based refactoring approach that assists developers in taking advantage of enhanced interfaces for their legacy Java software. The approach features an extensive rule set that covers various corner-cases where default methods cannot be used. To demonstrate applicability, we implemented our approach as an Eclipse plug-in and applied it to 19 real-world Java projects, as well as submitted pull requests to popular GitHub repositories. The indication is that it is useful in migrating skeletal implementation methods to interfaces as default methods, sheds light onto the pattern’s usage, and provides insight to language designers on how this new construct applies to existing software

Proactive Empirical Assessment of New Language Feature Adoption via Automated Refactoring: The Case of Java 8 Default Methods

Programming languages and platforms improve over time, sometimes resulting in new language features that offer many benefits. However, despite these benefits, developers may not always be willing to adopt them in their projects for various reasons. In this paper, we describe an empirical study where we assess the adoption of a particular new language feature. Studying how developers use (or do not use) new language features is important in programming language research and engineering because it gives designers insight into the usability of the language to create meaning programs in that language. This knowledge, in turn, can drive future innovations in the area. Here, we explore Java 8 default methods, which allow interfaces to contain (instance) method implementations. Default methods can ease interface evolution, make certain ubiquitous design patterns redundant, and improve both modularity and maintainability. A focus of this work is to discover, through a scientific approach and a novel technique, situations where developers found these constructs useful and where they did not, and the reasons for each. Although several studies center around assessing new language features, to the best of our knowledge, this kind of construct has not been previously considered. Despite their benefits, we found that developers did not adopt default methods in all situations. Our study consisted of submitting pull requests introducing the language feature to 19 real-world, open source Java projects without altering original program semantics. This novel assessment technique is proactive in that the adoption was driven by an automatic refactoring approach rather than waiting for developers to discover and integrate the feature themselves. In this way, we set forth best practices and patterns of using the language feature effectively earlier rather than later and are able to possibly guide (near) future language evolution. We foresee this technique to be useful in assessing other new language features, design patterns, and other programming idioms

Proactive Empirical Assessment of New Language Feature Adoption via Automated Refactoring: The Case of Java 8 Default Methods

Programming languages and platforms improve over time, sometimes resulting in new language features that offer many benefits. However, despite these benefits, developers may not always be willing to adopt them in their projects for various reasons. In this paper, we describe an empirical study where we assess the adoption of a particular new language feature. Studying how developers use (or do not use) new language features is important in programming language research and engineering because it gives designers insight into the usability of the language to create meaning programs in that language. This knowledge, in turn, can drive future innovations in the area. Here, we explore Java 8 default methods, which allow interfaces to contain (instance) method implementations. Default methods can ease interface evolution, make certain ubiquitous design patterns redundant, and improve both modularity and maintainability. A focus of this work is to discover, through a scientific approach and a novel technique, situations where developers found these constructs useful and where they did not, and the reasons for each. Although several studies center around assessing new language features, to the best of our knowledge, this kind of construct has not been previously considered. Despite their benefits, we found that developers did not adopt default methods in all situations. Our study consisted of submitting pull requests introducing the language feature to 19 real-world, open source Java projects without altering original program semantics. This novel assessment technique is proactive in that the adoption was driven by an automatic refactoring approach rather than waiting for developers to discover and integrate the feature themselves. In this way, we set forth best practices and patterns of using the language feature effectively earlier rather than later and are able to possibly guide (near) future language evolution. We foresee this technique to be useful in assessing other new language features, design patterns, and other programming idioms

Proactive Empirical Assessment of New Language Feature Adoption via Automated Refactoring: The Case of Java 8 Default Methods

Programming languages and platforms improve over time, sometimes resulting in new language features that offer many benefits. However, despite these benefits, developers may not always be willing to adopt them in their projects for various reasons. In this paper, we describe an empirical study where we assess the adoption of a particular new language feature. Studying how developers use (or do not use) new language features is important in programming language research and engineering because it gives designers insight into the usability of the language to create meaning programs in that language. This knowledge, in turn, can drive future innovations in the area. Here, we explore Java 8 default methods, which allow interfaces to contain (instance) method implementations. Default methods can ease interface evolution, make certain ubiquitous design patterns redundant, and improve both modularity and maintainability. A focus of this work is to discover, through a scientific approach and a novel technique, situations where developers found these constructs useful and where they did not, and the reasons for each. Although several studies center around assessing new language features, to the best of our knowledge, this kind of construct has not been previously considered. Despite their benefits, we found that developers did not adopt default methods in all situations. Our study consisted of submitting pull requests introducing the language feature to 19 real-world, open source Java projects without altering original program semantics. This novel assessment technique is proactive in that the adoption was driven by an automatic refactoring approach rather than waiting for developers to discover and integrate the feature themselves. In this way, we set forth best practices and patterns of using the language feature effectively earlier rather than later and are able to possibly guide (near) future language evolution. We foresee this technique to be useful in assessing other new language features, design patterns, and other programming idioms

Safe Automated Refactoring for Intelligent Parallelization of Java 8 Streams

Streaming APIs are becoming more pervasive in mainstream Object-Oriented programming languages and platforms. For example, the Stream API introduced in Java 8 allows for functional-like, MapReduce-style operations in processing both finite, e.g., collections, and infinite data structures. However, using this API efficiently involves subtle considerations such as determining when it is best for stream operations to run in parallel, when running operations in parallel can be less efficient, and when it is safe to run in parallel due to possible lambda expression side-effects. Also, streams may not run all operations in parallel depending on particular collectors used in reductions. In this paper, we present an automated refactoring approach that assists developers in writing efficient stream code in a semantics-preserving fashion. The approach, based on a novel data ordering and typestate analysis, consists of preconditions and transformations for automatically determining when it is safe and possibly advantageous to convert sequential streams to parallel, unorder or de-parallelize already parallel streams, and optimize streams involving complex reductions. The approach was implemented as a plug-in to the popular Eclipse IDE, uses the WALA and SAFE analysis frameworks, and was evaluated on 11 Java projects consisting of ∼642K lines of code. We found that 57 of 157 candidate streams (36.31%) were refactorable, and an average speedup of 3.49 on performance tests was observed. The results indicate that the approach is useful in optimizing stream code to their full potential

Safe Automated Refactoring for Intelligent Parallelization of Java 8 Streams

Streaming APIs are becoming more pervasive in mainstream Object-Oriented programming languages. For example, the Stream API introduced in Java 8 allows for functional-like, MapReduce-style operations in processing both finite and infinite data structures. However, using this API efficiently involves subtle considerations like determining when it is best for stream operations to run in parallel, when running operations in parallel can be less efficient, and when it is safe to run in parallel due to possible lambda expression side-effects. In this paper, we present an automated refactoring approach that assists developers in writing efficient stream code in a semantics-preserving fashion. The approach, based on a novel data ordering and typestate analysis, consists of preconditions for automatically determining when it is safe and possibly advantageous to convert sequential streams to parallel and unorder or de-parallelize already parallel streams. The approach was implemented as a plug-in to the Eclipse IDE, uses the WALA and SAFE analysis frameworks, and was evaluated on 11 Java projects consisting of ∼642K lines of code. We found that 57 of 157 candidate streams (36.31%) were refactorable, and an average speedup of 3.49 on performance tests was observed. The results indicate that the approach is useful in optimizing stream code to their full potential

An Empirical Study of Refactorings and Technical Debt in Machine Learning Systems

Machine Learning (ML), including Deep Learning (DL), systems, i.e., those with ML capabilities, are pervasive in today’s data-driven society. Such systems are complex; they are comprised of ML models and many subsystems that support learning processes. As with other complex systems, ML systems are prone to classic technical debt issues, especially when such systems are long-lived, but they also exhibit debt specific to these systems. Unfortunately, there is a gap of knowledge in how ML systems actually evolve and are maintained. In this paper, we fill this gap by studying refactorings, i.e., source-to-source semantics-preserving program transformations, performed in real-world, open-source software, and the technical debt issues they alleviate. We analyzed 26 projects, consisting of 4.2 MLOC, along with 327 manually examined code patches. The results indicate that developers refactor these systems for a variety of reasons, both specific and tangential to ML, some refactorings correspond to established technical debt categories, while others do not, and code duplication is a major cross-cutting theme that particularly involved ML configuration and model code, which was also the most refactored. We also introduce 14 and 7 new ML-specific refactorings and technical debt categories, respectively, and put forth several recommendations, best practices, and anti-patterns. The results can potentially assist practitioners, tool developers, and educators in facilitating long-term ML system usefulness

Automated Evolution of Feature Logging Statement Levels Using Git Histories and Degree of Interest

Logging—used for system events and security breaches to more informational yet essential aspects of software features—is pervasive. Given the high transactionality of today’s software, logging effectiveness can be reduced by information overload. Log levels help alleviate this problem by correlating a priority to logs that can be later filtered. As software evolves, however, levels of logs documenting surrounding feature implementations may also require modification as features once deemed important may have decreased in urgency and vice-versa. We present an automated approach that assists developers in evolving levels of such (feature) logs. The approach, based on mining Git histories and manipulating a degree of interest (DOI) model, transforms source code to revitalize feature log levels based on the “interestingness” of the surrounding code. Built upon JGit and Mylyn, the approach is implemented as an Eclipse IDE plug-in and evaluated on 18 Java projects with ~3 million lines of code and ~4K log statements. Our tool successfully analyzes 99.26% of logging statements, increases log level distributions by ~20%, identifies logs manually modified with a recall of ~80% and a level-direction match rate of ~87%, and increases the focus of logs in bug fix contexts ~83% of the time. Moreover, pull (patch) requests were integrated into large and popular open-source projects. The results indicate that the approach is promising in assisting developers in evolving feature log levels

Истражување за ефикасноста на генерирање код со GPT (Generative Pre-Trained Transformer) за задачи во софтверското инженерство

Брзиот напредок на моделите за машинско учење кои користат обработка на природен јазик предизвика интерес за нивната потенцијална примена за генерирање код во областа софтверското инженерство. Оваа теза ја испитува ефикасноста на GPT (Генеративен претходно-трениран трансформер) моделите во автоматизирањето на задачите за кодирање, оценувајќи го нивниот потенцијал за подобрување на ефикасноста, точноста и квалитетот на кодот. Студијата вклучува длабинска анализа на моделите базирани на GPT, вклучувајќи ги GPT-3.5 и GPT-4, и ги оценува нивните перформанси врз различни програмски јазици и задачи. Таа користи квалитативни и квантитативни мерки и увиди базирани на анкети за да обезбеди сеопфатна проценка за ефикасноста на овие модели во генерирањето код. Првичните наоди сугерираат дека иако GPT моделите покажуваат потенцијал за производство на точен, синтаксички прецизен код за добро специфицирани задачи, нивната ефикасност се намалува кога се соочуваат со двосмислени или сложени описи на задачи. Овие резултати ги истакнуваат и можностите и ограничувањата на алатките за генерирање код базирани на GPT, што укажува на потребата за пософистицирани модели способни да се справат со сложеноста на софтверското инженерство. Истражувањето, исто така, ги истражува импликациите на генерирањето код засновано на GPT врз работните текови на софтверското инженерство, дискутирајќи ги можните промени во улогите на софтверските инженери. Анализиран е потенцијалот овие алатки за вештачка интелигенција да извршуваат секојдневни задачи, со што ќе им се овозможи на инженерите да се фокусираат на дизајн на високо ниво и на стратегиско одлучување. Истовремено, се анализираат предизвиците, вклучително и неопходноста од 4 темелно тестирање и верификација на кодот генериран со овие алатки и потенцијалните етички импликации на вештачката интелигенција во развојот на софтверот. Оваа студија придонесува за разбирање на практичните апликации и ограничувањата на ВИ во развојот на софтвер и изгледите за подобрување. Се потврдува дека иако моделите базирани на GPT покажуваат значителен потенцијал во автоматизирањето на специфичните аспекти на софтверското инженерство, човечкиот придонес и надзорот остануваат клучни за справување со сложени, креативни и двосмислени задачи. Клучни зборови: Вештачка интелигенција, машинско учење, обработка на природни јазици, автоматско програмирање, квалитет на код, ефикасност на работниот тек, етика во вештачката интелигенција