Automatically recommending test code examples to inexperienced developers

Abstract

New graduates joining the software engineering workforce sometimes have trouble writing test code. Coming from university, they lack a hands-on approach to testing and have little experience with writing tests in a real-world setting. Software companies resort to costly training camps or mentoring initiatives. Not overcoming this lack of testing skills early on can hinder the newcomer’s professional progress in becoming a high-quality engineer. Studying open source developers, we found that they rely on a project’s pre-existing test code to learn how to write tests and adapt test code for their own use. We propose to strategically present useful and contextual test code examples from a project’s test suite to newcomers in order to facilitate learning and test writing. With an automatic suggestion mechanism for valuable test code, the newcomer is enabled to learn how senior developers write tests and copy it. Having access to suitable tests lowers the barrier for writing new tests.