Romain Robbes — Info — Research — Teaching — Service

Research

My research interests lie in software engineering, more specifically in the fields of software maintenance, empirical software engineering and mining software repositories. I currently follow two main research tracks: (1) mining of fine-grained developer traces to understand and improve the low-level aspects of the developement process, and (2) mining of complete software ecosystems, to understand and improve the dynamics of entire software development communities. I also have additional interests in programming languages and environments, and code profiling.

My publications are listed below. You may also want to have a look at my profile on DBLP, Google Scholar, Microsoft Academic Search, or the ACM. These sites may provide more information (including links to pdfs or bibtex entries), but may be out of date in some aspects.

Book Chapters

  1. Collecting and Processing Interaction Data for Recommendation Systems W. Maalej, T. Fritz, R. Robbes — Springer 2014 in Recommendation Systems in Software Engineering, edited by Robillard, Maalej, Walker, and Zimmermann

Journals

  1. Object-Oriented Software Extensions in Practice R. Robbes, D. Röthlisberger, É. Tanter — EMSE 2014 Empirical Software Engineering, to appear
  2. An Empirical Study on the Impact of Static Typing on Software Maintainability S. Hanenberg, S. Kleinschmager, R. Robbes, É. Tanter, A. Stefik — EMSE 2014 Empirical Software Engineering, to appear
  3. DIE: A Domain Specific Aspect Language for IDE Events J. Fabry, R. Robbes, M. Denker — J.UCS 2014 Journal of Universal Computer Science, Volume 20, Number 2, pp 135–168
  4. Are Software Analytics Efforts Worthwhile for Small Companies? The Case of Amisoft R. Robbes, R. Vidal, M. C. Bastarrica — IEEE Software 2013 IEEE Software, Volume 30, Number 5, pp 46–53
  5. How (and Why) Developers Use the Dynamic Features of Programming Languages: The Case of Smalltalk O. Calláu, R. Robbes, É. Tanter, D. Röthlisberger — EMSE 2013 Empirical Software Engineering (Springer), Volume 18, Number 6, pp 1156–1194 (Springer)
  6. Evaluating defect prediction approaches: a benchmark and an extensive comparison M. D’Ambros, M. Lanza, R. Robbes — EMSE 2012 Empirical Software Engineering, Volume 17, Number 5, pp 531–577 (Springer)
  7. Refining code ownership with synchronous changes L. Hattori, M. Lanza, R. Robbes — EMSE 2012 Empirical Software Engineering, Volume 17, Number 4, pp 467–499 (Springer)
  8. SPY: A Flexible Code Profiling Framework A. Bergel, F. Bañados, R. Robbes, D Röthlisberger — COMLAN 2012 Computer Languages, Systems & Structures, Volume 38, Number 1, pp 16–28 (Elsevier)
  9. Execution profiling blueprints A. Bergel, F. Bañados, R. Robbes, W. Binder — SPE 2012 Software: Practice and Experience, Volume 42, Number 9, pp 1165–1192 (Wiley)
  10. On porting software visualization tools to the web M. D’Ambros, M. Lanza, M. Lungu, R. Robbes — STTT 2011 Software Tools and Technology Transfer, Volume 13, Number 2, pp 181–200 (Springer)
  11. Improving code completion with program history R. Robbes, M. Lanza — ASE 2010 Automated Software Engineering, Volume 17, Number 2, pp 181–212 (Springer)
  12. The small project observatory: Visualizing software ecosystems M. Lungu, M. Lanza, T. Girba, R. Robbes — SCP 2010 Science of Computer Programming, Volume 75, Number 4, pp 264–275 (Elsevier)
  13. A Change-Based Approach to Software Evolution R. Robbes, M. Lanza — ENTCS 2007 Electronic Notes in Theoretical Computer Science, Volume 166, pp 93–109 (Elsevier)

Top conferences and awards

  1. How does Quality of Formalized Software Processes Affect Adoption? M. C. Bastarrica, G. Matturo, R. Robbes, L. Silvestre, R. Vidal — CAiSE 2014, 18% 26th International Conference on Advanced Information Systems Engineering, pp 226–240
  2. How do API Documentation and Static Typing Affect API Usability? S. Endrikat, S. Hanenberg, R. Robbes, A. Stefik — ICSE 2014, 20% 36th International Conference on Software Engineering, pp 632–642
  3. How do developers react to API deprecation?: the case of a smalltalk ecosystem R. Robbes, M. Lungu, D. Röthlisberger — SIGSOFT FSE 2012, 17% 20th ACM SIGSOFT Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering, p 56
  4. An empirical study of the influence of static type systems on the usability of undocumented software C. Mayer, S. Hanenberg, R. Robbes, É. Tanter, A. Stefik — OOPSLA 2012, 25% 27th Annual ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Object-Oriented Programming, Systems, Languages, and Applications, pp 683–702
  5. Extensions during Software Evolution: Do Objects Meet Their Promise? R. Robbes, D. Röthlisberger, É. Tanter — ECOOP 2012, 21% 26th European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming, pp 28–52
  6. How Developers Use the Dynamic Features of Programming Languages: the Case of Smalltalk O. Callau, R. Robbes, E. Tanter, D. Röthlisberger — MSR 2011, best paper, special issue 8th ACM/IEEE Working Conference on Mining Software Repositories, pp 23–32
  7. Software Systems as Cities: A Controlled Experiment R. Wettel, M. Lanza, R. Robbes — ICSE 2011, 14% 33rd ACM/IEEE International Conference on Software Engineering, pp 551–560
  8. Linking emails and source code artifacts A. Bacchelli, M. Lanza, R. Robbes — ICSE 2010, 13%. 32nd ACM/IEEE International Conference on Software Engineering, pp 375–384
  9. Benchmarking Lightweight Techniques to Link E-Mails and Source Code A. Bacchelli, M. D’Ambros, M. Lanza, R. Robbes — WCRE 2009, best paper 16th IEEE Working Conference on Reverse Engineering, pp 205–214
  10. How Program History Can Improve Code Completion R. Robbes, M. Lanza — ASE 2008, 12%, special issue 23rd ACM/IEEE International Conference on Automated Software Engineering, pp 317–326

Conferences

  1. On the Use of Type Predicates in Object-Oriented Software: The Case of Smalltalk O. Callaú, R. Robbes, É. Tanter, D. Röthlisberger, A. Bergel — DLS 2014 10th Dynamic Languages Symposium, pp 135–146
  2. An Empirical Comparison of Static and Dynamic Type Systems on API Usage in the Presence of an IDE: Java vs. Groovy with Eclipse P. Petersen, S. Hanenberg, R. Robbes — ICPC 2014 22nd International Conference on Program Comprehension, pp 212–222
  3. Do static type systems improve the maintainability of software systems? An empirical study S. Kleinschmager, S. Hanenberg, R. Robbes, É. Tanter, A. Stefik — ICPC 2012, special issue 20th International Conference on Program Comprehension, pp 153–162
  4. Enabling Program Comprehension through a Visual Object-focused Development Environment F. Olivero, M. Lanza, M. D’Ambros, R. Robbes — VL/HCC 2011 27th IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing, pp 127–134
  5. Language-Independent Clone Detection Applied to Plagiarism Detection R. Brixtel, M. Fontaine, B. Lesner, C. Bazin, R. Robbes — SCAM 2010 10th IEEE International Working Conference on Source Code Analysis and Manipulation, pp 77–86
  6. Visualizing Dynamic Metrics with Profiling Blueprints A. Bergel, R. Robbes, W. Binder — TOOLS 2010 48th International Conference on Objects, Models, Components, Patterns, pp 291–309
  7. Replaying IDE Interactions to Evaluate and Improve Change Prediction Approaches R. Robbes, D. Pollet, M. Lanza — MSR 2010 7th ACM/IEEE Working Conference on Mining Software Repositories, pp 161–170
  8. An extensive comparison of bug prediction approaches M. D’Ambros, M. Lanza, R. Robbes — MSR 2010, special issue 7th ACM/IEEE Working Conference on Mining Software Repositories, pp 31–41
  9. On the Relationship Between Change Coupling and Software Defects M. D’Ambros, M. Lanza, R. Robbes — WCRE 2009 16th IEEE Working Conference on Reverse Engineering, pp 135–144
  10. Promises and Perils of Porting Software Visualization Tools to the Web M. D’Ambros, M. Lungu, M. Lanza, R. Robbes — WSE 2009, special issue 11th IEEE International Symposium on Web Systems Evolution, pp 109–118
  11. Example-based Program Transformation R. Robbes, M. Lanza — MODELS 2008 11th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Model Driven Engineering, Languages, and Systems, pp 174–188
  12. Characterizing and Understanding Development Sessions R. Robbes, M. Lanza — ICPC 2007 15th International Conference on Program Comprehension, pp 155–164
  13. An Approach to Software Evolution Based on Semantic Changes R. Robbes, M. Lanza, M. Lungu — FASE 2007 10th Conference on Fundamental Approaches to Software Engineering, pp 27–41
  14. Microprints: A Pixel-Based, Semantically Rich Visualization of Methods R. Robbes, S. Ducasse, M. Lanza — ESUG 2005 13th International Smalltalk Conference, pp 172–188
  15. An Aspect-Based Multi-Agent System R. Robbes, N. Bouraqadi, S. Stinckwich — ESUG 2004 12th International Smalltalk Conference, pp 65–85

Short conference papers and tool demos

  1. Pitekün: An Experimental Visual Tool to Assist Code Navigation and Code Understanding J. Kubelka, A. Bergel, R. Robbes — SCCC 2014 33rd International Conference of the Chilean Computer Science Society, to appear
  2. Using Developer Interaction Data to Compare Expertise Metrics R. Robbes, D. Röthlisberger — MSR 2013, 23% 10th Working Conference on Mining Software Repositories, 297–300
  3. On how often code is cloned across repositories N. Schwarz, M. Lungu, R. Robbes — ICSE NIER 2012, 17% 34th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Software Engineering, pp 1289–1292
  4. Gaucho: Programming == Modeling F. Olivero, M. Lanza, M. D’Ambros, R. Robbes — ECOOP 2011 25th European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming
  5. A Study of Ripple Effects in Software Ecosystems R. Robbes, M. Lungu — ICSE NIER 2011, 23% 33rd ACM/IEEE International Conference on Software Engineering, pp 904–907
  6. Requirements Engineering Practices in Very Small Software Enterprises: A Diagnostic Study
    A. Quispe, M. Marques, L. Silvestre, S. Ochoa, R. Robbes — SCCC 2010 29th International Conference of the Chilean Computer Science Society, pp 81–87
  7. Recovering inter-project dependencies in software ecosystems M. Lungu, R. Robbes, M. Lanza — ASE 2010 25th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Automated Software Engineering, pp 309–312
  8. Supporting Task-Oriented Navigation in IDEs with Configurable HeatMaps D. Rothlisberger, O. Nierstrasz, S. Ducasse, D. Pollet, R. Robbes — ICPC 2009 17th International Conference on Program Comprehension, pp 253–257
  9. A Teamwork-Based Approach to Programming Fundamentals with Scheme, Smalltalk and Java M. Lanza, A. Murphy, R. Robbes, M. Lungu, P. Bonzini — ICSE 2008 30th International Conference on Software Engineering, Education Track, pp. 787 - 790
  10. SpyWare: A Change-Aware Development Toolset R. Robbes, M. Lanza — ICSE 2008 30th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Software Engineering, pp 847–850
  11. Logical Coupling Based on Fine-grained Change Information
    R. Robbes, D. Pollet, M. Lanza — WCRE 2008 15th IEEE Working Conference on Reverse Engineering, pp 42–46

Workshop papers

  1. Asking and Answering Questions during a Programming Change Task in Pharo Language J. Kubelka, A. Bergel, R. Robbes — PLATEAU 2014 5th Workshop on Evaluation and Usability of Programming Languages and Tools, to appear
  2. WEON: towards a software ecosystem ONtology C. Gutierrez, R. Robbes — WEA 2013 1th International Workshop on software Ecosystem Architectures, pp 16–20
  3. Tracking human-centric controlled experiments with biscuit F. Olivero, M. Lanza, M. D’Ambros, R. Robbes — PLATEAU 2012 4th Annual ACM Workshop on Evaluation and Usability of Programming Languages and Tools
  4. Spy: A flexible and Agile Code Profiling Framework A. Bergel, F. Bañados, R. Robbes, D. Röthlisberger — IWST 2010 2nd International Workshop on Smalltalk Technologies, pp 21–28
  5. Commit 2.0 M. D’Ambros, M. Lanza, R. Robbes — Web2SE 2010 1st International Workshop on Web 2.0 for Software Engineering, pp. 14–19
  6. Lumiere : An Infrastructure for Producing 3D Applications in Smalltalk
    F. Olivero, M. Lanza, R. Robbes — Famoosr 2009 3rd International Workshop on FAMIX and Moose in Reengineering, pp 8–11
  7. Lumiere : a Novel Framework for Rendering 3D graphics in Smalltalk F. Olivero, M. Lanza, R. Robbes — ISWT 2009 1st International Workshop on Smalltalk Technologies, pp 20–28
  8. On the Evaluation of Recommender Systems with Recorded Interactions R. Robbes — SUITE 2009 1st ICSE Workshop on Search-Driven Development, Users, Infrastructure, Tools, and Evaluation, pp 45–48
  9. The “Extract Refactoring” Refactoring R. Robbes, M. Lanza — WRT 2007 1st International Workshop on Refactoring Tools, pp 29–30
  10. Mining a Change-Based Software Repository R. Robbes — MSR 2007 4th International Workshop on Mining Software Repositories, pp 15–23
  11. Change-Based Software Evolution R. Robbes, M. Lanza — EVOL 2006 2nd International ERCIM Workshop on Software Evolution, pp 159–164
  12. Versioning Systems for Evolution Research
    R. Robbes, M. Lanza — IWPSE 2005 8th International Workshop on Principles of Software Evolution, pp 155–164
  13. Multi-level Method Understanding with Microprints
    S. Ducasse, M. Lanza, R. Robbes — VISSOFT 2005
    3rd IEEE International Workshop on Visualizing Software For Understanding and Analysis, pp 33–38

Theses

  1. Of Change and Software
    R. Robbes — Ph.D. Thesis, 2008
    University of Lugano
  2. Mise en Oeuvre de la Programmation par Aspects dans le Cadre des Systèmes Multi-agents
    R. Robbes — Master’s Thesis, 2003
    University of Caen

Proceedings and special issues

  1. Special Issue on WCRE 2013 M. Di Penta, R. Oliveto, R. Robbes – EMSE, 2015 Empirical Software Engineering (to appear in 2015)
  2. WCRE 2013: Proceedings of the 20th Working Conference on Reverse Engineering R. Lämmel, R. Oliveto, R. Robbes – IEEE Press, 2013 Held in Koblenz, Germany, October 14–17, 2013
  3. IWPSE 2013: Proceedings of the 13th International Workshop on Principles of Software Evolution R. Robbes, G. Robles — ACM Press, 2013 Co-located with ESEC/FSE 2013
  4. IWPSE-EVOL 2011: Proceedings of the 12th International Workshop on Principles of Software Evolution and the 7th annual ERCIM Workshop on Software Evolution
    A. Cleve, R. Robbes (eds) — ACM Press, 2011
    Co-located with ESEC/FSE 2011
  5. Special issue on IWPSE-EVOL 2011
    A. Cleve, R. Robbes (eds) — JSME, 2013
    Journal of Software Maintenance and Evolution (to appear in 2013)

Various

  1. Effective Mining of Software Repositories
    M. D’Ambros, R. Robbes — Tutorial, ICSM 2011 27th IEEE International Conference on Sofware Maintenance
  2. Supporting Task-Oriented Navigation in IDEs with Configurable HeatMaps
    D. Rothlisberger, O. Nierstrasz, S. Ducasse, D. Pollet, R. Robbes — Tech Report, 2009
    University of Bern
  3. A Benchmark for Change Prediction
    R. Robbes, M. Lanza, D. Pollet — Tech Report, 2008
    University of Lugano
  4. Towards Change-aware Development Tools
    R. Robbes, M. Lanza — Tech Report, 2007
    University of Lugano
  5. Modeling Change-based Software Evolution
    R. Robbes — Doctoral Symposium, ECOOP 2007
    21st European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming
  6. Explicitely Modeling Software Change
    R. Robbes — LASER 2006
    3rd LASER Summer School on Software Engineering
  7. Un modèle multi-agent unifiant les notions de groupe et d’aspect
    R. Robbes, N. Bouraqadi, S. Stinckwich — JFSMA 2004
    13èmes Journées Francophones sur les Systèmes Multi-Agents