2019/06/27 by Emillie Thiselton, Christoph Treude, Thiselton, Emillie +1 · 1 citation
Computer Science · #Advanced Malware Detection Techniques #FOS: Computer and information sciences #Software Engineering (cs.SE) #Software Engineering Research #Software Testing and Debugging Techniques
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1906.11456
openalex publication_date 2019/06/27 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Background: Compilers tend to produce cryptic and uninformative error messages, leaving programmers confused and requiring them to spend precious time to resolve the underlying error. To find help, programmers often take to online question-and-answer forums such as Stack Overflow to start discussion threads about the errors they encountered. Aims: We conjecture that information from Stack Overflow threads which discuss compiler errors can be automatically collected and repackaged to provide programmers with enhanced compiler error messages, thus saving programmers' time and energy. Method: We present Pycee, a plugin integrated with the popular Sublime Text IDE to provide enhanced compiler error messages for the Python programming language. Pycee automatically queries Stack Overflow to provide customised and summarised information within the IDE. We evaluated two Pycee variants through a think-aloud user study during which 16 programmers completed Python programming tasks while using Pycee. Results: The majority of participants agreed that Pycee was helpful while completing the study tasks. When compared to a baseline relying on the official Python documentation to enhance compiler error messages, participants generally preferred Pycee in terms of helpfulness, citing concrete suggestions for fixes and example code as major benefits. Conclusions: Our results confirm that data from online sources such as Stack Overflow can be successfully used to automatically enhance compiler error messages. Our work opens up venues for future work to further enhance compiler error messages as well as to automatically reuse content from Stack Overflow for other aspects of programming.