- author = "Felix Adler and Gordon Fraser and Eva Gruendinger and Nina Koerber and Simon Labrenz and Jonas Lerchenberger and Stephan Lukasczyk and Sebastian Schweikl",
- title = "Improving Readability of {Scratch} Programs with Search-based Refactoring",
- booktitle = "21st IEEE International Working Conference on Source Code Analysis and Manipulation, SCAM 2021",
- year = "2021",
- pages = "120--130",
- address = "Luxembourg",
- month = sep # " 27-28",
- note = "16000 GP entry",
- keywords = "genetic algorithms, genetic programming, genetic improvement, grammatical evolution, SBSE, NSGA-II, LitterBox, JSON, refactoring, Java",
- isbn13 = "978-1-6654-4898-7",
- timestamp = "Sat, 09 Apr 2022 12:45:31 +0200",
-
biburl = "
https://dblp.org/rec/conf/scam/AdlerFGKLLLS21.bib",
- bibsource = "dblp computer science bibliography, https://dblp.org",
-
URL = "https://arxiv.org/abs/2108.07114",
-
URL = "https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=9610643",
-
DOI = "
doi:10.1109/SCAM52516.2021.00023",
-
code_url = "https://github.com/se2p/artifact-scam2021",
-
video_url = "https://youtu.be/9ndMZvgEOVg",
- size = "11 pages",
- abstract = "Block-based programming languages like SCRATCH have become increasingly popular as introductory languages for novices. These languages are intended to be used with a tinkering approach which allows learners and teachers to quickly assemble working programs and games, but this often leads to low code quality. Such code can be hard to comprehend, changing it is error-prone, and learners may struggle and lose interest. The general solution to improve code quality is to refactor the code. However, SCRATCH lacks many of the common abstraction mechanisms used when refactoring programs written in higher programming languages. In order to improve SCRATCH code, we therefore propose a set of atomic code transformations to optimise readability by (1) rewriting control structures and (2) simplifying scripts using the inherently concurrent nature of SCRATCH programs. By automating these transformations it is possible to explore the space of possible variations of SCRATCH programs. In this paper, we describe a multi-objective search-based approach that determines sequences of code transformations which improve the readability of a given SCRATCH program and therefore form refactorings. Evaluation on a random sample of 1000 SCRATCH programs demonstrates that the generated refactorings reduce complexity and entropy in 70.4% of the cases, and 354 projects are improved in at least one metric without making any other metric worse. The refactored programs can help both novices and their teachers to improve their code.",
-
notes = "Also known as \cite{ImprovingReadabilityScratch}. See
also \cite{adler2021improving}
'26 atomic code transformations' [to the AST]. 'We evaluate an implementation of this approach on a random sample of 1000 learners program'. '704 are improved with respect to complexity and entropy, and 354...' size, Halstead complexity, and Shannon entropy (based on program syntax).
p122 'Inverse transformation' of the AST. control dependence graph. data dependence graph. 'forward-may dataflow analysis to identify which statements are time-dependent on which other statements'
p124 'integer representation inspired by grammatical evolution'
p126 'verify that the code transformations preserve the semantics' 'Applicable code transformations were found for all but 28 [of 1000] projects in our dataset.'
Many uses of swap.
p129 'The number of code transformations that do not change the program semantics found by our search is substantial' 'neutral program space'. 'explainability central'
SCAM 2021 Also known as \cite{9610643}",
