DFlow - A Platform to Profile Developers Roberto Minelli and Michele Lanza REVEAL @ Faculty of Informatics University of Lugano, Switzerland http://dflow.inf.usi.ch

1. DFlow – A Platform to Profile Developers
Roberto Minelli and Michele Lanza
REVEAL @ Faculty of Informatics
University of Lugano, Switzerland
http://dflow.inf.usi.ch SmalltalkHub.com: DevFlow

2. Developers spend a large part of their working time using
an Integrated Development Environment

3. Integrated
Development
Environment
Eclipse
Visual
Studio
Idea
NetBeansXCode

4. Pharo
Squeak
Dolphin
VisualWorks
VA Smalltalk

5. Pharo
Smalltalk IDE

7. W
riting

8. W
riting
Navigating

9. W
riting
Navigating
“Programmers spend more time navigating the code
than working with it.”
M. Kersten and G.C. Murphy
“Mylar: a degree-of-interest
model for IDEs” AOSD 2005

10. Y. Lee, N. Chen, R. Johnson
“Drag-and-drop refactoring: intuitive and
efficient program transformation” ICSE 2013 “The current support for refactoring
is unintuitive and inefficient.”
D. Roethlisberger, O. Nierstrasz, S. Ducasse
“Autumn leaves: Curing the window plague in IDEs” WCRE 2009
“Devs are forced to open
multiple windows (tabs).
The IDE becomes a
crowded workspace.
J. Singer, R. Elves, and M. Storey
“Navtracks: supporting navigation in
soware maintenance” ICSM 2005
M. Kersten, G. C. Murphy
“Mylar: a degree-of-interest model for
IDEs” AOSD 2005
Researchers proposed various
approaches to beer support
browsing through soware.

11. To what extent does Pharo
support the navigation?
How, when, why do
developers use Pharo to
navigate the system?
Navigating source code
with the IDE

12. DFlow-Web
DFlow-Pharo
DFlow
A Platform to Profile Developers
It silently records all the Pharo interactions
while the developer is programming.
It enables retrospective analyses through a
web-based soware visualization platform.

13. DFlow-Pharo: An Extension to the Pharo IDE
Standard Tools
Manager
Browser

14. It’s demo time!
DFlow
PHARO

15. Event
Entities
Type
Timing information

16. Event
Entities
Type
Timing information
Navigation
Inspection
Editing
Handling

17. Event
Entities
Type
Timing information
Timestamp and
duration.

18. Event
Entities
Type
Timing information
…the user
interacted with

19. A. Bergel, Bañados, Robbes, Röthlisberger
“SPY: A Flexible Code Profiling Framework”
Computer Languages, Systems and Structures 2012
Code
Instrumentation
Custom-made
Profilers
How do we profile the developer?

20. What to do with this
large amount of data?

21. It’s demo time!
R. Minelli and M. Lanza
“Visualizing the Workflow of Developers.”
VISSOFT 2013
DFlow

22. All navigation events and one
single editing
A debugging session…
1

23. 2

24. Green navigation stacks
(browsing the API of a class)
2

25. Back edges increase
the cognitive weight
of a session.
2

26. What’s
next?

27. • Understand and
characterize
development sessions
• Identify development
workflow bolenecks
in terms of IDE usage
Reverse
Forward
• Use DFlow data in a
run-time context to
enhance the IDE

28. Forward
1

29. DFlow
Forward
Adding a DFlow group
1

30. Forward
Into
2
Over Through

31. Forward
Into Over Through
Into
2

32. Forward
Through
Into
Into Over
Over
2

33. Forward
Through
Into
Into Over
Over
Over
2

34. Forward
Into
Over
Over
Into Over Through
Into
2

35. Forward
Into
Over
Over
Into Over Through
Into
Into
2

36. Forward
Into Over Through
Into
Over
Over
Into
Into
#inspect
2

37. suggest
DFlow
REC
Forward
Into
Over
Over
Into
Into
#inspect
…next time
DFlow
data
context+
2

38. Forward
Adding live visualizations
3

39. Forward
You worked here…
…here…
…and also here!
3

40. W
riting
Navigating
To what extent does Pharo
support the navigation?
How, when, why do
developers use Pharo to
navigate the system?
Navigating source code
with the IDE
• Understand and
characterize
development sessions
• Identify development
workflow bolenecks
in terms of IDE usage
Reverse
Forward
• Use DFlow data in a
run-time context to
enhance the IDE
It’s demo time!
DFlow

41. Any other idea?
Talk to me (or drop me an email)
robertominelli
roberto.minelli@usi.ch