Wiring Programmers To Prevent Buggy Code

mikejuk (1801200) writes "Microsoft Researcher Andrew Begel, together with academic and industry colleagues have been trying to detect when developers are struggling as they work, in order to prevent bugs before they are introduced into code. A paper presented at the 36th International Conference on Software Engineering, reports on a study conducted with 15 professional programmers to see how well an eye-tracker, an electrodermal activity (EDA) sensor, and an electroencephalography (EEG) sensor could be used to predict whether developers would find a task difficult. Difficult tasks are potential bug generators and finding a task difficult is the programming equivalent of going to sleep at the wheel. Going beyond this initial investigation researchers now need to decide how to support developers who are finding their work difficult. What isn't known yet is how developers will react if their actions are approaching bug-potential levels and an intervention is deemed necessary. Presumably the nature of the intervention also has to be worked out. So next time you sit down at your coding station consider that in the future they may be wanting to wire you up just to make sure you aren't a source of bugs. And what could possibly be the intervention?"

Comments

Re:Hi, it looks like you are writing difficult cod

[Anonymous Coward]

I think any decent coder knows when they are struggling and increases their focus or grabs someone on their team to help.

In my 20 years of experience in 6 different shops, you'd be called in "idiot" - wrongfully so, I might add.

Asking questions is considered a weakness of your intellect in this business - even if you are working on some social media app or website - well, advertising.

It's amazing how advertising companies want the best of the best even though their software is crap.

I'm talking about: Google, facebook, Yahoo!, and eveything coming out of Silicon Valley.