Matheus Paixao

Luan P. Lima, Lincoln S. Rocha, Carla I. M. Bezerra et al.

Modern programming languages (e.g., Java and C#) provide features to separate error-handling code from regular code, seeking to enhance software comprehensibility and maintainability. Nevertheless, the way exception handling (EH) code is structured in such languages may lead to multiple, different, and complex control flows, which may affect the software testability. Previous studies have reported that EH code is typically neglected, not well tested, and its misuse can lead to reliability degradation and catastrophic failures. However, little is known about the relationship between testing practices and EH testing effectiveness. In this exploratory study, we (i) measured the adequacy degree of EH testing concerning code coverage (instruction, branch, and method) criteria; and (ii) evaluated the effectiveness of the EH testing by measuring its capability to detect artificially injected faults (i.e., mutants) using 7 EH mutation operators. Our study was performed using test suites of 27 long-lived Java libraries from open-source ecosystems. Our results show that instructions and branches within $\mathtt{catch}$ blocks and $\mathtt{throw}$ instructions are less covered, with statistical significance than the overall instructions and branches. Nevertheless, most of the studied libraries presented test suites capable of detecting more than 70% of the injected faults. From a total of 12,331 mutants created in this study, the test suites were able to detect 68% of them.

Chaiyong Ragkhitwetsagul, Jens Krinke, Matheus Paixao et al.

Online code clones are code fragments that are copied from software projects or online sources to Stack Overflow as examples. Due to an absence of a checking mechanism after the code has been copied to Stack Overflow, they can become toxic code snippets, e.g., they suffer from being outdated or violating the original software license. We present a study of online code clones on Stack Overflow and their toxicity by incorporating two developer surveys and a large-scale code clone detection. A survey of 201 high-reputation Stack Overflow answerers (33% response rate) showed that 131 participants (65%) have ever been notified of outdated code and 26 of them (20%) rarely or never fix the code. 138 answerers (69%) never check for licensing conflicts between their copied code snippets and Stack Overflow's CC BY-SA 3.0. A survey of 87 Stack Overflow visitors shows that they experienced several issues from Stack Overflow answers: mismatched solutions, outdated solutions, incorrect solutions, and buggy code. 85% of them are not aware of CC BY-SA 3.0 license enforced by Stack Overflow, and 66% never check for license conflicts when reusing code snippets. Our clone detection found online clone pairs between 72,365 Java code snippets on Stack Overflow and 111 open source projects in the curated Qualitas corpus. We analysed 2,289 non-trivial online clone candidates. Our investigation revealed strong evidence that 153 clones have been copied from a Qualitas project to Stack Overflow. We found 100 of them (66%) to be outdated, of which 10 were buggy and harmful for reuse. Furthermore, we found 214 code snippets that could potentially violate the license of their original software and appear 7,112 times in 2,427 GitHub projects.

Murilo Coelho, Denivan Campos, Mariana Maia Bezerra et al.

Context: Leadership has been extensively studied in management and agile software development; however, prior research predominantly focuses on formal roles and predefined leadership models, offering limited insight into how leadership is experienced and demonstrated by software practitioners in everyday practice. Objective: Our goal is to identify and categorize leadership practices as perceived and reported by software development practitioners based on their professional experiences. Method: We conducted a content analysis of 116 practitioner-authored articles published on the Dev.to online community. Articles were systematically collected, screened, and coded, resulting in the extraction, correlation analysis and categorization of leadership practices grounded in practitioners narratives. Results: We identified 103 practices for software project leaders, distinguished between recommended and discouraged ones. These practices were organized into five categories: People Management & Development, Processes & Execution, Professional & Personal Growth, Communication & Articulation and Strategic Vision. The most recurrent recommended practices include Cultivating & Practicing Interpersonal Skills, Managing & Delegating Team Work, and Practicing & Developing Managerial Skills, whereas Micromanagement, Counterproductive Work Patterns, and Counterproductive Communication Styles emerged as the most frequent discouraged practices. We organized all practices into a conceptual map. Conclusion: The findings indicate that software leadership is mainly associated with managerial and interpersonal practices rather than technical expertise. The resulting conceptual map summarizes these practices and can serve as a reference for understanding leadership in software development contexts.