How should compilers explain problems to developers?

Titus Barik, Denae Ford, Emerson R. Murphy-Hill, Chris Parnin

Abstract

Compilers primarily give feedback about problems to developers through the use of error messages. Unfortunately, developers routinely find these messages to be confusing and unhelpful. In this paper, we postulate that because error messages present poor explanations, theories of explanation---such as Toulmin's model of argument---can be applied to improve their quality. To understand how compilers should present explanations to developers, we conducted a comparative evaluation with 68 professional software developers and an empirical study of compiler error messages found in Stack Overflow questions across seven different programming languages.

BibTeX

@inproceedings{Barik-al:FSE18,
  author    = {Titus Barik and
               Denae Ford and
               Emerson R. Murphy{-}Hill and
               Chris Parnin},
  title     = {How should compilers explain problems to developers?},
  booktitle = {{ESEC/SIGSOFT} {FSE}},
  pages     = {633--643},
  publisher = {{ACM}},
  year      = {2018},
}

How should compilers explain problems to developers?

Abstract

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