Refactoring for Asynchronous Execution on Mobile

To improve responsiveness, oftentimes developers use asynchronous programming. In the post-PC era, asynchronous programming is even more in demand because mobile and wearable devices have limited resources and access the network excessively. One contemporary development task is refactoring long-running, blocking synchronous code (e.g., accessing the web, cloud, database, or file system) into nonblocking asynchronous code. This paper educates the mobile app developer on the kinds of refactorings they need to perform to improve responsiveness, along with the obstacles of using asynchrony. We also present our formative studies on understanding the challenges that developers face when retrofitting asynchrony, our program analyses and transformations together with our growing, practical toolset and resources that enable app developers to retrofit asynchrony.