what do practitioners ask about code clone? a preliminary investigation of stack overflow

Software Engineering Laboratory, Department of Computer Science, Graduate School of Information Science and Technology, Osaka University

What Do Practitioners Ask about Code Clone? A Preliminary Investigation of Stack Overflow

Eunjong Choi1, Raula Gaikovina Kula2,

Norihiro Yoshida2, Katsuro Inoue1

1Graduate School of Information Science and Technology,

Osaka University, Japan2Graduate School of Information Science,

Nagoya University, Japan

1

Department of Computer Science, Graduate School of Information Science and Technology, Osaka University

2

Very little is known about practitioner’s needs on the detection and analysis of code clones.

Motivation of This Study

researcher

practitioners


Stack Overflow (SO)

3


The Data That We Analyzed

4

from July 31, 2008to July 31, 2012



5


Choose keywords related code clones



6



Select questions based on the chosen keywords

'code clone''code cloning'

'code redundancy'

'code duplicate''code duplication''duplicate code'

'duplicated code'



7




Manually validate


'code redundancy'


'duplicated code'

1,654 questions



8


925 questions



Manually validate


'code redundancy'


'duplicated code'

1,654 questions



9

from July 31, 2008to July 31, 2012:

925 questions



Manually validate


'code redundancy'


'duplicated code'


Research Question 1

• RQ1: What Kinds of Programming Languages/Techniques were Appeared

in Questions on Clones?

10


Methodology

11


Methodology

12

Tags related to development techniques?

Tags related to programming language ?


Methodology

13


Methodology

14

Tags related to development techniques?

Tags related to programming language ?


python

ruby-on-rails

.net

javascript

php

jquery

asp.net

c++

java

c#

0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180 200

Finding (1/2)

Tags related to programming language


mvc

architecture

unit-testing

generics

dry

design

templates

inheritance

design-patterns

refactoring

0 20 40 60 80

Finding (2/2)

Tags related to development techniques


mvc

architecture

unit-testing

generics

dry

design

templates

inheritance

design-patterns

refactoring

0 20 40 60 80

Finding (2/2)

The most frequently appeared tags in the questionsare about object-oriented programming

languages and web programming languages.

Moreover, tags about clone management also frequently appear

Tags related to development techniques


Research Question 2

RQ2: Were Questions on Clones Asked by Trusted Practitioners?

18

Novice? Expert?

Practitioners that are interested in handling code clones


Methodology

19


Finding

20

Reputations(Clone) Reputations(General)0

500

1,000

1,500

2,000

2,500

3,000

AskedAnswered

The average reputations of practitioners who asked and answered questions on clones, and other questions


Finding

21

Reputations(Clone) Reputations(General)0

500

1,000

1,500

2,000

2,500

3,000

AskedAnswered

Practitioners who asked about clonesare trusted by the others in SO.

The average reputations of practitioners who asked and answered questions on clones, and other questions


Discussion

22


23

Discussion


24

Discussion


25

Discussion


Summary

26

what do practitioners ask about code clone? a preliminary investigation of stack overflow

Engineering

department of computer

analysis of code clones

keywords related code

osaka university methodology

nagoya university

study researcher practitioners

raula gaikovina kula2

norihiro yoshida2