Let’s Talk <i>With</i> Developers, Not <i>About</i> Developers: A Review of Automatic Program Repair Research

Automatic program repair (APR) offers significant potential for automating some coding tasks. Using APR could reduce the high costs historically associated with fixing code faults and deliver benefits to software engineering. Adopting also have profound implications developers’ daily activities, transforming their work practices. To realise of it is vital that we consider how developers feel about impact may on work. Developing tools without consideration developer likely undermine success deployment. In this paper, critically review are considered in research by analysing human factors treated 260 studies from Monperrus’s Living Review APR. Over half our were motivated a problem faced (e.g., difficulty faults). Despite these human-oriented motivations, fewer than 7% included study. We looked detail at found quality mixed (for example, one study was based input only developer). Our results suggest often talked about studies, but rarely xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">with . A more comprehensive reliable understanding relation needed. Without understanding, will be difficult develop techniques which integrate effectively into workflows. recommend future agenda advance