Article

Source code that talks: an exploration of Eclipse task comments and their implication to repository mining

Authors:

Annie T. T. Ying,

James L. Wright,

Steven AbramsAuthors Info & Claims

MSR '05: Proceedings of the 2005 international workshop on Mining software repositories

Pages 1 - 5

https://doi.org/10.1145/1083142.1083152

Published: 17 May 2005 Publication History

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Abstract

A programmer performing a change task to a system can benefit from accurate comments on the source code. As part of good programming practice described by Kernighan and Pike in the book The Practice of Programming, comments should "aid the understanding of a program by briefly pointing out salient details or by providing a larger-scale view of the proceedings." In this paper, we explore the widely varying uses of comments in source code. We find that programmers not only use comments for describing the actual source code, but also use comments for many other purposes, such as "talking" to colleagues through the source code using a comment "Joan, please fix this method." This kind of comments can complicate the mining of project information because such team communication is often perceived to reside in separate archives, such as emails or newsgroup postings, rather than in the source code. Nevertheless, these and other types of comments can be very useful inputs for mining project information.

References

[1]

Eclipse task tags website. http://127.0.0.1:55317/help/index.jsp?topic=/org.eclipse.jdt.doc.user/referencrefpreferences-task-tags.htm.

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W. G. Griswold. Coping with crosscutting software changes using information transparency. In Reflection 2001: International Conference on Metalevel Architectures and Separation of Crosscutting, pages 250--265, 2001.

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[3]

B. W. Kernighan and R. Pike. The practice of programming. Addison-Wesley Longman Publishing Co., Inc., 1999.

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D.E. Knuth. Literate programming. The Computer Journal, 27(2):97--111, 1984.

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D. L. Parnas. On the criteria to be used in decomposing systems into modules. Communication of ACM, 15(12):1053--1058, 1972.

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Cited By

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Wang HGao ZBi TGrundy JWang XWu MYang X(2024)What Makes a Good TODO Comment?ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology10.1145/366481133:6(1-30)Online publication date: 13-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3664811
Zhang XZou WChen LLi YZhou Y(2023)Towards the Analysis and Completion of Syntactic Structure Ellipsis for Inline CommentsIEEE Transactions on Software Engineering10.1109/TSE.2022.321627949:4(2285-2302)Online publication date: 1-Apr-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/TSE.2022.3216279
Lin BWang SLiu ZXia XMao X(2023)Predictive Comment Updating With Heuristics and AST-Path-Based Neural Learning: A Two-Phase ApproachIEEE Transactions on Software Engineering10.1109/TSE.2022.318545849:4(1640-1660)Online publication date: 1-Apr-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/TSE.2022.3185458
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Index Terms

Source code that talks: an exploration of Eclipse task comments and their implication to repository mining
1. Information systems
  1. Information systems applications
    1. Data mining
2. Software and its engineering
  1. Software notations and tools
    1. Development frameworks and environments
      1. Integrated and visual development environments

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Source code that talks: an exploration of Eclipse task comments and their implication to repository mining

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Information

Published In

MSR '05: Proceedings of the 2005 international workshop on Mining software repositories

May 2005

109 pages

ISBN:1595931236

DOI:10.1145/1083142

ACM SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes Volume 30, Issue 4
July 2005
1514 pages
ISSN:0163-5948
DOI:10.1145/1082983
Issue’s Table of Contents

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 17 May 2005

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Wang HGao ZBi TGrundy JWang XWu MYang X(2024)What Makes a Good TODO Comment?ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology10.1145/366481133:6(1-30)Online publication date: 13-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3664811
Zhang XZou WChen LLi YZhou Y(2023)Towards the Analysis and Completion of Syntactic Structure Ellipsis for Inline CommentsIEEE Transactions on Software Engineering10.1109/TSE.2022.321627949:4(2285-2302)Online publication date: 1-Apr-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/TSE.2022.3216279
Lin BWang SLiu ZXia XMao X(2023)Predictive Comment Updating With Heuristics and AST-Path-Based Neural Learning: A Two-Phase ApproachIEEE Transactions on Software Engineering10.1109/TSE.2022.318545849:4(1640-1660)Online publication date: 1-Apr-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/TSE.2022.3185458
Liu ZXia XLo DYan MLi S(2023)Just-In-Time Obsolete Comment Detection and UpdateIEEE Transactions on Software Engineering10.1109/TSE.2021.313890949:1(1-23)Online publication date: 1-Jan-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/TSE.2021.3138909
Williams IGyamfi A(2022)Media Richness, Knowledge Sharing, and Computer Programming by Virtual Software TeamsResearch Anthology on Agile Software, Software Development, and Testing10.4018/978-1-6684-3702-5.ch082(1721-1736)Online publication date: 2022
https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-6684-3702-5.ch082
Guo ZLiu SLiu JLi YChen LLu HZhou Y(2021)How Far Have We Progressed in Identifying Self-admitted Technical Debts? A Comprehensive Empirical StudyACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology10.1145/344724730:4(1-56)Online publication date: 23-Jul-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3447247
Lin BWang SLiu KMao XBissyande T(2021)Automated Comment Update: How Far are We?2021 IEEE/ACM 29th International Conference on Program Comprehension (ICPC)10.1109/ICPC52881.2021.00013(36-46)Online publication date: May-2021
https://doi.org/10.1109/ICPC52881.2021.00013
Liu ZXia XYan MLi SGrundy JLe Goues CLo D(2020)Automating just-in-time comment updatingProceedings of the 35th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering10.1145/3324884.3416581(585-597)Online publication date: 21-Dec-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3324884.3416581
Nie PRai RLi JKhurshid SMooney RGligoric MDumas MPfahl DApel SRusso A(2019)A framework for writing trigger-action todo comments in executable formatProceedings of the 2019 27th ACM Joint Meeting on European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering10.1145/3338906.3338965(385-396)Online publication date: 12-Aug-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3338906.3338965
Wen FNagy CBavota GLanza MGuéhéneuc YKhomh FSarro F(2019)A large-scale empirical study on code-comment inconsistenciesProceedings of the 27th International Conference on Program Comprehension10.1109/ICPC.2019.00019(53-64)Online publication date: 25-May-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/ICPC.2019.00019
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