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ESEC/FSE 2021
Thu 19 - Sat 28 August 2021 Clowdr Platform
Wed 25 Aug 2021 11:00 - 11:10 - Testing—Debugging 1 Chair(s): Panos Louridas
Wed 25 Aug 2021 23:00 - 23:10 - Testing—Debugging 1 Chair(s): Yiling Lou

Error messages are critical starting points for debugging. Unfortunately, they seem to be notoriously cryptic, confusing, and uninformative. Yet, it still remains a mystery why error messages receive such bad reputations, especially given that they are merely very short pieces of natural language text. In this paper, we empirically demystify the causes and fixes of "bad" error messages, by qualitatively studying 201 Stack Overflow threads and 335 GitHub issues. We specifically focus on error messages encountered in data science development, which is an increasingly important but not well studied domain.
We found that the causes of "bad" error messages are far more complicated than poor phrasing or flawed articulation of error message content. Many error messages are inherently and inevitably misleading or uninformative, since libraries do not know user intentions and cannot "see" external errors. Fixes to error-message-related issues mostly involve source code changes, while exclusive message content updates only take up a small portion. In addition, whether an error message is informative or helpful is not always clear-cut; even error messages that clearly pinpoint faults and resolutions can still cause confusion for certain users. These findings thus call for a more in-depth investigation on how error messages should be evaluated and improved in the future.

Wed 25 Aug

Displayed time zone: Athens change

11:00 - 12:00
Testing—Debugging 1Research Papers +12h
Chair(s): Panos Louridas Athens University of Economics and Business
11:00
10m
Paper
Demystifying “Bad” Error Messages in Data Science Libraries
Research Papers
Yida Tao Shenzhen University, Zhihui Chen Shenzhen University, Yepang Liu Southern University of Science and Technology, Jifeng Xuan Wuhan University, Zhiwu Xu Shenzhen University, Shengchao Qin Teesside University
DOI
11:10
10m
Paper
NIL: Large-Scale Detection of Large-Variance Clones
Research Papers
Tasuku Nakagawa Osaka University, Yoshiki Higo Osaka University, Shinji Kusumoto Osaka University
DOI Pre-print
11:20
10m
Paper
Understanding and Detecting Server-Side Request Races in Web ApplicationsArtifacts Available
Research Papers
Zhengyi Qiu North Carolina State University, Shudi Shao North Carolina State University, Qi Zhao North Carolina State University, Guoliang Jin North Carolina State University
DOI
11:30
30m
Live Q&A
Q&A (Testing—Debugging 1)
Research Papers

23:00 - 00:00
Testing—Debugging 1Research Papers
Chair(s): Yiling Lou Purdue University
23:00
10m
Paper
Demystifying “Bad” Error Messages in Data Science Libraries
Research Papers
Yida Tao Shenzhen University, Zhihui Chen Shenzhen University, Yepang Liu Southern University of Science and Technology, Jifeng Xuan Wuhan University, Zhiwu Xu Shenzhen University, Shengchao Qin Teesside University
DOI
23:10
10m
Paper
NIL: Large-Scale Detection of Large-Variance Clones
Research Papers
Tasuku Nakagawa Osaka University, Yoshiki Higo Osaka University, Shinji Kusumoto Osaka University
DOI Pre-print
23:20
10m
Paper
Understanding and Detecting Server-Side Request Races in Web ApplicationsArtifacts Available
Research Papers
Zhengyi Qiu North Carolina State University, Shudi Shao North Carolina State University, Qi Zhao North Carolina State University, Guoliang Jin North Carolina State University
DOI
23:30
30m
Live Q&A
Q&A (Testing—Debugging 1)
Research Papers