research-article

Automatically generating documentation for lambda expressions in Java

Authors:

Patanamon Thongtanunam,

Christoph TreudeAuthors Info & Claims

MSR '19: Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Mining Software Repositories

Pages 310 - 320

https://doi.org/10.1109/MSR.2019.00057

Published: 26 May 2019 Publication History

Abstract

When lambda expressions were introduced to the Java programming language as part of the release of Java 8 in 2014, they were the language's first step into functional programming. Since lambda expressions are still relatively new, not all developers use or understand them. In this paper, we first present the results of an empirical study to determine how frequently developers of GitHub repositories make use of lambda expressions and how they are documented. We find that 11% of Java GitHub repositories use lambda expressions, and that only 6% of the lambda expressions are accompanied by source code comments. We then present a tool called LambdaDoc which can automatically detect lambda expressions in a Java repository and generate natural language documentation for them. Our evaluation of LambdaDoc with 23 professional developers shows that they perceive the generated documentation to be complete, concise, and expressive, while the majority of the documentation produced by our participants without tool support was inadequate. Our contribution builds an important step towards automatically generating documentation for functional programming constructs in an object-oriented language.

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Cited By

Cogo FXia XHassan A(2023)Assessing the Alignment between the Information Needs of Developers and the Documentation of Programming Languages: A Case Study on RustACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology10.1145/354694532:2(1-48)Online publication date: 4-Apr-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3546945
Rai SBelwal RGupta A(2022)A Review on Source Code DocumentationACM Transactions on Intelligent Systems and Technology10.1145/351931213:5(1-44)Online publication date: 21-Jun-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3519312
Zheng MYang JWen MZhu HLiu YJin HGrundy J(2021)Why do developers remove lambda expressions in Java?Proceedings of the 36th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering10.1109/ASE51524.2021.9678600(67-78)Online publication date: 15-Nov-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/ASE51524.2021.9678600
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cover image ACM Conferences

MSR '19: Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Mining Software Repositories

May 2019

640 pages

General Chair:
Margaret-Anne Storey
University of Victoria, Canada
,
Program Chairs:
Bram Adams
MCIS, Polytechnique Montreal, Canada
,
Sonia Haiduc
Florida State University

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SIGSOFT: ACM Special Interest Group on Software Engineering
IEEE-CS: Computer Society

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IEEE Press

Publication History

Published: 26 May 2019

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ICSE '19

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ICSE '19: 41st International Conference on Software Engineering

May 26 - 27, 2019

Quebec, Montreal, Canada

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2025 IEEE/ACM 46th International Conference on Software Engineering

April 26 - May 3, 2025

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Cited By

Cogo FXia XHassan A(2023)Assessing the Alignment between the Information Needs of Developers and the Documentation of Programming Languages: A Case Study on RustACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology10.1145/354694532:2(1-48)Online publication date: 4-Apr-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3546945
Rai SBelwal RGupta A(2022)A Review on Source Code DocumentationACM Transactions on Intelligent Systems and Technology10.1145/351931213:5(1-44)Online publication date: 21-Jun-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3519312
Zheng MYang JWen MZhu HLiu YJin HGrundy J(2021)Why do developers remove lambda expressions in Java?Proceedings of the 36th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering10.1109/ASE51524.2021.9678600(67-78)Online publication date: 15-Nov-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/ASE51524.2021.9678600
Lucas WBonifácio RCanedo EMarcílio DLima FMachado ISouza RMaciel RSant'Anna C(2019)Does the Introduction of Lambda Expressions Improve the Comprehension of Java Programs?Proceedings of the XXXIII Brazilian Symposium on Software Engineering10.1145/3350768.3350791(187-196)Online publication date: 23-Sep-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3350768.3350791
Sangle SMuvva SDumas MPfahl DApel SRusso A(2019)On the use of lambda expressions in 760 open source Python projectsProceedings of the 2019 27th ACM Joint Meeting on European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering10.1145/3338906.3342499(1232-1234)Online publication date: 12-Aug-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3338906.3342499

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