Title
A compositional paradigm of automating refactorings
Abstract
Recent studies suggest that programmers greatly underuse refactoring tools, especially for complex refactorings. Complex refactorings tend to be tedious and error-prone to perform by hand. To promote the use of refactoring tools for complex changes, we propose a new paradigm for automating refactorings called compositional refactoring. The key idea is to perform small, predictable changes using a tool and manually compose them into complex changes. This paradigm trades off some level of automation by higher predictability and control. We show that this paradigm is natural, because our analysis of programmers' use of the Eclipse refactoring tool in the wild shows that they frequently batch and compose automated refactorings. We then show that programmers are receptive to this new paradigm through a survey of 100 respondents. Finally, we show that the compositional paradigm is effective through a controlled study of 13 professional programmers, comparing this paradigm to the existing wizard-based one.
Year
DOI
Venue
2013
10.1007/978-3-642-39038-8_22
ECOOP
Keywords
Field
DocType
underuse refactoring tool,paradigm trade,new paradigm,complex refactorings,compositional refactoring,compositional paradigm,refactoring tool,compose automated refactorings,eclipse refactoring tool,complex change,empirical,restructuring,composition,refactoring
Predictability,Programming language,Computer science,Automation,Eclipse,Code refactoring,Wizard
Conference
Volume
ISSN
Citations 
7920
0302-9743
12
PageRank 
References 
Authors
0.69
24
5
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Mohsen Vakilian11627.62
Nicholas Chen2573.58
Roshanak Zilouchian Moghaddam3534.18
Stas Negara42189.23
Ralph E. Johnson51790264.74