University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

A Study and Toolkit for Asynchronous Programming in C#

Okur, Semih; Hartveld, David L.; Dig, Danny; Deursen, Arie van

Content Files
okur-2014-icse.pdf

Permalink

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/45837

Description

Title
A Study and Toolkit for Asynchronous Programming in C#
Author(s)
  • Okur, Semih
  • Hartveld, David L.
  • Dig, Danny
  • Deursen, Arie van
Issue Date
2013
Keyword(s)
  • asynchronous programming
  • refactoring
  • mobile software
  • responsiveness
  • performance bugs
Date of Ingest
2013-09-27T18:04:57Z
Abstract
Asynchronous programming is in demand today, because responsiveness is increasingly important on all modern devices. Yet, we know little about how developers use asynchronous programming in practice. Without such knowledge, developers, researchers, language and library designers, and tool vendors can make wrong assumptions. We present the first study that analyzes the usage of asynchronous programming in a large experiment. We analyzed 1378 open source Windows Phone (WP) apps, comprising 12M SLOC, produced by 3376 developers. Using this data, we answer 2 research questions about use and misuse of asynchronous constructs. Inspired by these findings, we developed (i) Asyncifier, an automated refactoring tool that converts callback-based asynchronous code to the new async/await; (ii) Corrector, a tool that finds and corrects common misuses of async/await. Our empirical evaluation shows that these tools are (i) applicable and (ii) efficient. Developers accepted 314 patches generated by our tools.
Type of Resource
text
Genre of Resource
Conference Paper / Presentation
Language
en
Permalink
http://hdl.handle.net/2142/45837

Owning Collections

Research and Tech Reports - Computer Science PRIMARY