TY - GEN
T1 - Effectiveness of Explaining a Program to Others in Finding Its Bugs
AU - Nakamura, Toshihiro
AU - Monden, Akito
AU - Sasakura, Mariko
AU - Uwano, Hidetake
N1 - Funding Information:
Part of this research was supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant number 20H05706.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 IEEE.
PY - 2021
Y1 - 2021
N2 - Explaining a program to others helps get others to find bugs and for the explainer him/herself to find bugs. However, to the best of our knowledge, there is no quantitative evidence that explaining a program to others helps the explainer find bugs. This study aims to show quantitatively, using an experimental evaluation, that the explainer himself can find new bugs by explaining the program to others. In the experiment, subjects first review a program that contains many bugs and try to find as many bugs as possible. Next, they are required to explain the program aloud to others. We see if they notice any new bugs themselves during the explanation. As a result of the experiment, five out of the six subjects could find new bugs when explaining the program to others. According to the questionnaire to the subjects, the subjects who find many bugs feel that they can understand the program better by explaining it to others.
AB - Explaining a program to others helps get others to find bugs and for the explainer him/herself to find bugs. However, to the best of our knowledge, there is no quantitative evidence that explaining a program to others helps the explainer find bugs. This study aims to show quantitatively, using an experimental evaluation, that the explainer himself can find new bugs by explaining the program to others. In the experiment, subjects first review a program that contains many bugs and try to find as many bugs as possible. Next, they are required to explain the program aloud to others. We see if they notice any new bugs themselves during the explanation. As a result of the experiment, five out of the six subjects could find new bugs when explaining the program to others. According to the questionnaire to the subjects, the subjects who find many bugs feel that they can understand the program better by explaining it to others.
KW - bug detection
KW - code reading
KW - human factor
KW - Software review
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85125734231&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85125734231&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1109/SNPD51163.2021.9704932
DO - 10.1109/SNPD51163.2021.9704932
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85125734231
T3 - Proceedings - 22nd IEEE/ACIS International Conference on Software Engineering, Artificial Intelligence, Networking and Parallel/Distributed Computing, SNPD 2021-Fall
SP - 248
EP - 253
BT - Proceedings - 22nd IEEE/ACIS International Conference on Software Engineering, Artificial Intelligence, Networking and Parallel/Distributed Computing, SNPD 2021-Fall
A2 - Yau, Her-Terng
A2 - Stenzel, Roland
A2 - Shyu, Mei-Ling
A2 - Lin, Hsiung-Cheng
PB - Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
T2 - 22nd IEEE/ACIS International Conference on Software Engineering, Artificial Intelligence, Networking and Parallel/Distributed Computing, SNPD 2021-Fall
Y2 - 24 November 2021 through 26 November 2021
ER -