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A game of refactoring: Studying the impact of gamification in software refactoring

Published: 24 May 2016 Publication History

Abstract

Software refactoring is an essential skill for developers. It improves the quality of the software and reduces maintenance costs in the long run. In this paper, we investigate the impact that gamification can have on the refactoring process and on the usability of the existing refactoring tools. For this reason we created CodeArena, a gamification system that tracks and rewards refactorings during development. We used CodeArena in an exploratory study which involved 12 students of computer science. Then, we collected the feedback provided by these students via a survey. Although the gamification had less effect than expected, our findings can be useful to practitioners interested in promoting refactoring tools via gamification.

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Cited By

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  • (2024)Automating Source Code Refactoring in the ClassroomProceedings of the 55th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V. 110.1145/3626252.3630787(60-66)Online publication date: 7-Mar-2024
  • (2020)Ontology-Based Analysis and Design of Educational Games for Software RefactoringComputer Supported Education10.1007/978-3-030-58459-7_29(602-628)Online publication date: 10-Nov-2020
  • (2020)RefacTutor: An Interactive Tutoring System for Software RefactoringComputer Supported Education10.1007/978-3-030-58459-7_12(236-261)Online publication date: 10-Nov-2020
  • Show More Cited By

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cover image ACM Other conferences
XP '16 Workshops: Proceedings of the Scientific Workshop Proceedings of XP2016
May 2016
128 pages
ISBN:9781450341349
DOI:10.1145/2962695
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 24 May 2016

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Author Tags

  1. CodeArena
  2. Eclipse
  3. Gamification
  4. Refactoring
  5. Survey

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Overall Acceptance Rate 11 of 15 submissions, 73%

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Cited By

View all
  • (2024)Automating Source Code Refactoring in the ClassroomProceedings of the 55th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V. 110.1145/3626252.3630787(60-66)Online publication date: 7-Mar-2024
  • (2020)Ontology-Based Analysis and Design of Educational Games for Software RefactoringComputer Supported Education10.1007/978-3-030-58459-7_29(602-628)Online publication date: 10-Nov-2020
  • (2020)RefacTutor: An Interactive Tutoring System for Software RefactoringComputer Supported Education10.1007/978-3-030-58459-7_12(236-261)Online publication date: 10-Nov-2020
  • (2019)CleanGameProceedings of the XXXIII Brazilian Symposium on Software Engineering10.1145/3350768.3352490(437-446)Online publication date: 23-Sep-2019
  • (2019)CodeArenaProceedings of the Second International Conference on Technical Debt10.1109/TechDebt.2019.00023(68-70)Online publication date: 26-May-2019

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