Debugging Behaviour of Embedded-Software Developers: An Exploratory Study
This is an incremental study focusing on embedded-software debugging for intermediate developers, addressing a domain-specific gap compared to prior desktop software research.
The study investigated how intermediate programmers debug embedded software with semantic low-level errors, comparing successful and unsuccessful attempts to identify characteristics of effective debugging behavior.
Many researchers have studied the behaviour of successful developers while debugging desktop software. In this paper, we investigate the embedded-software debugging by intermediate programmers through an exploratory study. The bugs are semantic low-level errors, and the participants are students who completed a real-time operating systems course in addition to five other programming courses. We compare between the behaviour involved in successful debugging attempts versus unsuccessful ones. We describe some characteristics of smooth and successful debugging behaviour.