NDLI: Measuring the Stylistic Inconsistency in Software Projects using Hierarchical Agglomerative Clustering

Please wait, while we are loading the content...

Forecasting Communication Behavior in Student Software Projects

Estimating Story Points from Issue Reports

Search Based Training Data Selection For Cross Project Defect Prediction

On the Terms Within- and Cross-Company in Software Effort Estimation

Measuring the Stylistic Inconsistency in Software Projects using Hierarchical Agglomerative Clustering

An Empirical Evaluation of Distribution-based Thresholds for Internal Software Measures

Data Sets and Data Quality in Software Engineering: Eight Years On

Hidden Markov Models for the Prediction of Developer Involvement Dynamics and Workload

Predicting the Popularity of GitHub Repositories

A Manually Validated Code Refactoring Dataset and Its Assessment Regarding Software Maintainability

Measuring the Stylistic Inconsistency in Software Projects using Hierarchical Agglomerative Clustering

Content Provider	ACM Digital Library
Author	Keung, Jacky Mi, Qing Yu, Yang
Abstract	Background: Although many software engineering methodologies and guidelines are provided, it is common that developers apply their very own programming styles to the source code being produced. These individually preferred programming styles are more comprehensive for themselves, but may well conflict with each other. Thus, the problem of stylistic inconsistency is inevitable during the software development process involving multiple developers, the result is undesirable and that will significantly degrade program readability and maintainability. Aims: Given limited understanding in this regard, we perform an empirical analysis for the purpose of quantitatively measuring the inconsistency degree of programming style within a software project team. Method: We first propose stylistic fingerprints, which are represented as a set of attribute-counting-metrics, in an attempt to characterize different programming styles. Then we adopt the hierarchical agglomerative clustering (HAC) technique to quantitatively measuring the proximity of programming style based on six C/C++ open source projects chosen from different application domains. Results: The empirical results demonstrate the feasibility and validity of our fingerprinting methodology. Moreover, the proposed clustering procedure utilizing HAC algorithm with dendrograms is capable of effectively illustrating the inconsistency degree of programming style among source files, which is significant for future research. Conclusions: This study proposed an effective and efficient approach for analyzing programming style inconsistency, supported by a sound theoretical basis for dealing with such a problem. Ultimately improving program readability and therefore reduce the maintenance overhead for software projects.
Starting Page	1
Ending Page	10
Page Count	10
File Format	PDF
ISBN	9781450347723
DOI	10.1145/2972958.2972963
Language	English
Publisher	Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
Publisher Date	2016-09-09
Publisher Place	New York
Access Restriction	Subscribed
Subject Keyword	Stylistic inconsistency Empirical software engineering Hierarchical agglomerative clustering Programming style
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article

Central Library (ISO-9001:2015 Certified)
Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur
Kharagpur, West Bengal, India | PIN - 721302

See location in the Map
03222 282435
Mail: support@ndl.gov.in

Sl.	Authority	Responsibilities	Communication Details
1	Ministry of Education (GoI), Department of Higher Education	Sanctioning Authority	https://www.education.gov.in/ict-initiatives
2	Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur	Host Institute of the Project: The host institute of the project is responsible for providing infrastructure support and hosting the project	https://www.iitkgp.ac.in
3	National Digital Library of India Office, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur	The administrative and infrastructural headquarters of the project	Dr. B. Sutradhar bsutra@ndl.gov.in
4	Project PI / Joint PI	Principal Investigator and Joint Principal Investigators of the project	Dr. B. Sutradhar bsutra@ndl.gov.in Prof. Saswat Chakrabarti will be added soon
5	Website/Portal (Helpdesk)	Queries regarding NDLI and its services	support@ndl.gov.in
6	Contents and Copyright Issues	Queries related to content curation and copyright issues	content@ndl.gov.in
7	National Digital Library of India Club (NDLI Club)	Queries related to NDLI Club formation, support, user awareness program, seminar/symposium, collaboration, social media, promotion, and outreach	clubsupport@ndl.gov.in
8	Digital Preservation Centre (DPC)	Assistance with digitizing and archiving copyright-free printed books	dpc@ndl.gov.in
9	IDR Setup or Support	Queries related to establishment and support of Institutional Digital Repository (IDR) and IDR workshops	idr@ndl.gov.in