21 papers · ranked by Valyu relevance
Marvin Muñoz Barón, Marvin Wyrich, Stefan Wagner
Background: Developers spend a lot of their time on understanding source code. Static code analysis tools can draw attention to code that is difficult for developers to understand. However, most of the findings are based on non-validated metrics, which can lead to confusion and code, that is hard to understand, not…
Renyu Zhu, Lei Yuan, Xiang Li, Ming Gao + 1 more
Program understanding is a fundamental task in program language processing. Despite the success, existing works fail to take human behaviors as reference in understanding programs. In this paper, we consider human behaviors and propose the PGNN-EK model that consists of two main components. On the one hand, inspired by…
Anna A. Ivanova, Shashank Srikant, Yotaro Sueoka, Hope H. Kean + 4 more
Computer programming is a novel cognitive tool that has transformed modern society. What cognitive and neural mechanisms support this skill? Here, we used fMRI to investigate two candidate brain systems: the multiple demand (MD) system, typically recruited during math, logic, problem solving, and executive tasks, and…
Marvin Wyrich
Be it in debugging, testing, code review or, more recently, pair programming with AI assistance: in all these activities, software engineers need to understand source code. Accordingly, plenty of research is taking place in the field to find out, for example, what makes code easy to understand and which tools can best…
Valentina Lenarduzzi, Terhi Kilamo, Andrea Janes
Objective. The goal of this work is to investigate if the McCabe Cyclomatic Complexity or the Cognitive Complexity can be a good predictor for the developers' perceived code understandability to understand which of the two complexities can be used as criteria to evaluate if a piece of code is understandable.
Marvin Wyrich, Justus Bogner, Stefan Wagner
The relevance of code comprehension in a developer's daily work was recognized more than 40 years ago. Consequently, many experiments were conducted to find out how developers could be supported during code comprehension and which code characteristics contribute to better comprehension. Today, such studies are more…
Koichi Yamashita, Takamasa Nagao, Satoru Kogure, Yasuhiro Noguchi + 2 more
'Tatsuhiro Konishi' 'Yukihiro Itoh'] In this paper, we describe a code-reading support environment and practical classroom applications using this environment to understand nested loops. Previously, we developed a code-reading support system based on visualization of the relationships among the program code, target…
Y. Liu, J. Kim, C. Wilson, M. Bedny
Despite the importance of programming to modern society, the cognitive and neural bases of code comprehension are largely unknown. Programming languages might ‘recycle’ neurocognitive mechanisms originally used for natural languages. Alternatively, comprehension of code could depend on fronto-parietal networks shared…
M. Shahbaz Ismail, Sara Shahzad, Fahmi H. Quradaa, Sajid Anwar
Semantic code clone detection plays an essential role in software maintenance and quality assurance, as it helps uncover fragments of code that express the same logic even when their syntax has been altered or deliberately obfuscated. In this study, we propose a framework that combines hybrid representation learning…
Yoshiharu Ikutani, Takeshi D. Itoh, Takatomi Kubo
The understanding of brain activity during program comprehension have advanced thanks to noninvasive neuroimaging techniques, such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). However, individual neuroimaging studies of program comprehension often provided inconsistent results and made it difficult to identify the…
Koichi Yamashita, Ryota Fujioka, Satoru Kogure, Yasuhiro Noguchi + 2 more
'Tatsuhiro Konishi' 'Yukihiro Itoh'] Pointers are difficult learning targets for novice learners of C programming. For such difficult targets, introducing a system visualizing program behaviors is generally expected to support learners to understand the targets. However, visualization in existing systems often conceals…
Miloje Rakočević
In some previous works (2018a,b; 2019, 2021a,b, 2022) we presented a new type of mirror symmetry, expressed in the set of protein amino acids; such a symmetry, that it simultaneously represents the semiotic essence of the genetic code. In this paper we provide new evidences that the genetic code represents the unity of…
Authors not listed
Bayesian optimization (BO) has become increasingly important for experimental optimization across scientific domains, yet implementing BO pipelines requires significant programming expertise and familiarity with specialized frameworks. This creates a barrier for domain experts who could benefit from BO but lack the…
Pieter Floris Jacobs, Robert Pollice
Scientists across domains are often challenged to master domain-specific languages (DSLs) for their research, which are merely a means to an end but are pervasive in fields like computational chemistry. Automated code generation promises to overcome this barrier, allowing researchers to focus on their core expertise.…
Romain Brette
“Neural coding” is a popular metaphor in neuroscience, where objective properties of the world are communicated to the brain in the form of spikes. Here I argue that this metaphor is often inappropriate and misleading. First, when neurons are said to encode experimental parameters, the implied communication channel…
Eline de Jong, Sebastian De Haro
Although several accounts of scientific understanding exist, the concept of understanding in relation to technology remains underexplored. This paper addresses this gap by proposing a philosophical account of technological understanding: the type of understanding that is required for and reflected by successfully…
Rebecca Brunk, Kriti Shukla, Bryant Hutson, Yue Wang + 7 more
Genomic sequencing and other big biological data is unquestionably of paramount value, however the success in recruiting highly skilled individuals with diverse backgrounds has been limited. A main reason for this deficiency could be due to the lack of educational resources and early exposure to the field. With the…
Authors not listed
Step-by-step thinking is essential in all domains of chemical sciences and engineering. While machine learning tools are broadly used, algorithms that automate reasoning are far less common. We elaborate on seven categories of human reasoning activities and connect each to applications in chemical science and…
Jorge Wagensberg
The ultimate utility of science is widely agreed upon: the comprehension of reality. But there is much controversy about what scientific understanding actually means, and how we should proceed in order to gain new scientific understanding. Is there a method for acquiring new scientific knowledge? Is this method unique…
Natika W. Newton
How do we manage to understand a completely novel state of affairs, such as the sudden effects of an unexpected earthquake, or the arrival of a total stranger instead of the sister we were waiting for? In each case, for a moment we might be stunned, but we are able quite quickly to fit these events into our overall…
Philipp Schwartenbeck, Alon Baram, Yunzhe Liu, Shirley Mark + 5 more
Understanding the visual world is a constructive process. Whilst a frontal-hippocampal circuit is known to be essential for this task, little is known about the associated neuronal computations. Visual understanding appears superficially distinct from other known functions of this circuit, such as spatial reasoning and…