Icpc 2011 storey

SHriMP Views: The Untold Story

Margaret-Anne StoreyUniversity of Victoria

ICPC 2011 Award for Most Influential Paper from IWPC 2001. "An Interactive Visualization Environment for Exploring Java Programs" authored by Margaret-Anne Storey, Jeff Michaud and Casey Best.

http://www.thechiselgroup.org/


The storyline

• History of SHriMP Views– What inspired it– Lessons learned along the way (tools and

studies)– How the tool and underlying theory evolved

• Our follow-on work to SHriMP • Other visualizations that show promise

for the near future• Some advice for researchers


Acknowledgements….

• My students and former colleagues:– Hausi Muller– Kenny Wong– Casey Best– Jeff Michaud– Rob Lintern– Ian Bull– Chris Callendar– Del Myers– …

• Funding:– NSERC– University of

Victoria– IBM– Darpa– Stanford University– MIT– NASA– DRDC

Susan Sim, Filippo Ricci and other members of the committee for selecting this paper


10 years ago…..

• Year 2000 bug was still fresh in our memories!

• PCs around for 20 years• eCommerce was on the rise• Integration, migration,

interoperability (legacy code)


Many visualization tools

• Rigi, PECAN, Seesoft• Landscape views, Hy+• Surgeon’s Assistant• Bauhaus• …..• …..• …..• Imagix 4D• Sotograph• Polymetric views


What about Fred Brooks???


Fred Brooks misquoted…

• He claims software is inherently invisible and unvisualizable… not amenable to a geometric mapping… But are software code, designs, documentation, invisible?

• His quote referred to PhDs on visual programming! Not to visualization of preexisting software artifacts….

No silver bullet: Essence and accidents of software engineering, 1987 IEEE Computer


Information visualization• People have used external aids for

centuries to amplify cognition (e.g. paper, slide rule, diagrams, charts)

• Visualize: to form a mental image or vision• The use of computer supported,

interactive, visual representations of abstract data can amplify cognition

• Visualizations can help us gain insight about data


Other trends…

• Higraphs in software engineering [David Harel, 1988]

• Pad++, a zoomable user interface [Bederson et al., 1994]

• Continuous Zoom [Bartram et al., 1995]


SHriMP – A Software Exploration Tool

Simple Hierarchical Multi-Perspective Views (for Rigi):

• Make better use of limited screen area– Leveraging sophisticated animation

and layout, fisheye view features

[ICSM 1995]


Lessons #1

Evaluated early version of SHriMP and compared it to Command Line and Rigi (multiple windows) [WCRE 1996]

• “Source code is king” (Janice Singer)• Search is an essential activity in

program comprehension (Lethbridge, Singer)

• Fisheye views not so useful! • Efficiency was a concern


Comprehension theories• Top-down comprehension model

[Brooks, Soloway, Ehrlich, 1986]• Bottom-up comprehension

[Shneiderman/Mayer 1979, Pennington 1987]

• Opportunistic and systematic strategies [Littman et al., Letovsky 1987]

• Integrated meta-model[Vans, von Mayrhauser 1995]

• Hypermedia navigation (coherence, legibility) [e.g. Thurston et al.]


A Cognitive Framework for Describing and Evaluating Software Exploration Tools

Supportingprogram comprehension

Bottom-up

Top-down

IntegratedIntegrated

NavigationNavigation

Orientation cuesOrientation cues

User interfaceUser interface

Bottom-upBottom-up

Top-downTop-down


Orientation cuesOrientation cues

User interfaceUser interface

Cognitive Design Elements


Enhanceprogram comprehension


Reducecognitive overhead


IWPC 1997, JSS


Integrated

Bottom-up

Top-down


Provide directionalnavigation

Orientation cues


User interface




Support arbitrary navigation

Support arbitrary navigation

…bookmarks, search engines

Indicate options forreaching new locations

Indicate options forreaching new locations

Display path to the focus

Indicate the current focus

…histories, overview windows, trails


SHriMP – A Software Exploration Tool

Simple Hierarchical Multi-Perspective Views (for Rigi):

• Make better use of limited screen area– Leveraging sophisticated animation

and layout features

• Integrate code browsing using hypertext (HTML objects) embedded in the graph– Using nested graphs (containment) and ZUIs– Support for top down and bottom up navigation– Integrated search, source code views


Almost 10 year old demo!


What tools do programmers need to understand

programs?

A Cognitive Framework of Design Elements

to guide tool design

Evaluate tool usefulnessand usability with

user studies

How do programmersunderstand programs?


Lessons #2

Compared SHriMP with Rigi and SNiFF++ [WCRE 1997]

• Overviews in Rigi and SHriMP communicated a mental map

• Opportunistic sightseeing behaviours observed in SHriMP

• Need for better searching and filtering tools in SHriMP

• Layouts not so important (but preserving mental map is)

• Align with the tools developers use (reduce friction)

• “Star programmers” can use any tool


Creole: Integration of SHriMP with Eclipse

2007 Demo …


Recap on noteworthy features• Filmstrip – semantic bookmarks

(snapshots)• Scripting (javascript)• Customized views• On demand visualization


Beyond software visualization…. • Ontologies in Protégé, Jambalaya

(Darpa, Stanford University)• Version control information, Xia • Business flow diagrams,

Ebi (IBM)• Assembly (DND)


Lessons learned #3

• Need for on-demand task driven visualization as opposed to overviews…

• Customization required but very few users will write scripts (unless it is easy to do so!)

• Source code should be editable… Need to be able to play with the invisible stuff…

• Executing the program is important (duh…)


Lessons learned about empirical studies• Need for an underlying theory! Otherwise you only

know one tool is better than another not why… – Not enough to say my users liked it or that they used it or that

they answered questions they hadn’t actually thought of before they saw my tool!

• Student programmers are *not* the same as prof devs• Statistical significance is not the holy grail (too many

controls), strive to be convinced (but convincing reviewers is harder)

• Understand the different tradeoffs of empirical studies and choose wisely and purposefully [McGrath94, Easterbrook2007]


The next chapters?


NavTracks/VizTracks [ICSM2005]


Beyond Bookmarks: Waypoints


Waypoints and metadata

• Used by geographical positioning systems (GPS) to save locations for future navigation

• They can be entered explicitly by entering lat/long coordinates or during navigation

• They have metadata


TagSEA [CHI2006, ICSM2007]– Can waypoint in code, outside code,

docs, xml, breakpoints, url etc.– Tags used for indexing waypoints


Waypoints -> Tours [ICSE2007]

• Notion of user-defined trails was also proposed by Vannevar Bush for Memex (Bush, 1945)

• Use cases for source code tours: Code review, education, testing, debugging…


Dynamic Interactive Views

For Reverse EngineeringUses Dynamic Analysis to Create

Trace-Focused User Interfaces for IDEs


Diver:


Choosel

open source frameworkfor creating web-based

visualization environments with multiple coordinated views

Try out Choosel at: http://choosel-mashups.appspot.com


“each software project is alive performance”

www.jazz.net


“each software project is alive performance”


Other exciting research!

• Many other specialized visualization, exploration tools… tools for analytics…

• Software cartography (Adrian Kuhn et al.)

• Software Canvas (Rob Deline et al.)• Code bubbles (Andrew Bragdon et al.)• Debugger Canvas

– http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3p9XUwIlhJg


Some advice… (1)• Eat your own cooking

– You need to feel the pain that your tool helps resolve– You also need to feel the pain of using your own tool– But don’t assume that this will be enough! adoption is

hard!


Some advice… (2)• Focus on continuous need for comprehension

rather than just the software immigrant… • Nowadays easy to ask people for advice (e.g.

StackOverFlow…)… Can’t visualize what you don’t have yet!


Some advice… (3)• Does your tool really answer difficult questions

that developers really care about? How do you know? Theories or insights!


Theories are littering the landscape!• Cognitive dimensions (Green and Petre)• Cognitive framework of design elements

(Storey)• Cognitive support (Walenstein)• Pacione’s software visualization task model• Ko’s theory of navigation• Sillito, Murphy, Robillard… theories on

navigation and questions programmers ask• And more…• Look in other disciplines!


Comprehension theories• Top-down comprehension model

[Brooks, Soloway, Ehrlich, 1986]• Bottom-up comprehension

[Shneiderman/Mayer 1979, Pennington 1987]

• Opportunistic and systematic strategies [Littman et al., Letovsky 1987]

• Integrated meta-model[Vans, von Mayrhauser 1995]


Some advice… (4)• Understand different research method

limitations• Be informed• Write fewer but better papers! • Fake it! “A Rational Research Process, How and

Why to Fake it”


Concluding thought: Accident or essence?• Probably accidental…. Essential

complexity may still remain but cognitive support can help us deal more effectively with that inherent complexity

• Software visualization declining in popularity as a topic but not as a solution


Takeaways

• Layouts not that important, but the mental map is

• Need to integrate in the IDE with good support

• Can’t visualize what you don’t have• Importance of theories, eating your own

cooking• Consider different research methodologies• Cognitive support will never be out of

fashion


Contact me

• Email: [email protected]• Blog:

http://margaretannestorey.wordpress.com/

• Twitter: @margaretstorey, @web2se• Papers, tools:

http://www.thechiselgroup.org


References (1)• David Harel. 1988. On visual formalisms. Commun. ACM 31, 5

(May 1988), 514-530. DOI=10.1145/42411.42414 http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/42411.42414

• Benjamin B. Bederson and James D. Hollan. 1994. Pad++: a zooming graphical interface for exploring alternate interface physics. In Proceedings of the 7th annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology (UIST '94). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 17-26. DOI=10.1145/192426.192435 http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/192426.192435

• Lyn Bartram, Albert Ho, John Dill, and Frank Henigman. 1995. The continuous zoom: a constrained fisheye technique for viewing and navigating large information spaces. In Proceedings of the 8th annual ACM symposium on User interface and software technology (UIST '95). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 207-215. DOI=10.1145/215585.215977 http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/215585.215977


References (2)• Mental imagery in Program Design and Visual Programming,

by M. Petre and A. Blackwell, http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~afb21/publications/IJHCS.html

• Price et al’s principled taxonomy of software visualization: http://www.dgp.toronto.edu/people/RMB/papers/p20.pdf

• Cognitive questions in software visualization: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~afb21/publications/book-chapter.html

• Research methods in the social Sciences, by J. McGrath, http://social.cs.uiuc.edu/class/cs598kgk/papers/methodology-mcgrath.pdf

• Pacione, M.J., Roper, M., and Wood, M. A Novel Software Visualisation Model to Support Software Comprehension. In Proceedings of WCRE. 2004, 70-79.

• Andrew Bragdon, et al.: Code bubbles: a working set-based interface for code understanding and maintenance. CHI 2010: 2503-2512


References (3)• A Cognitive Framework by Storey et al:

http://www.cs.uvic.ca/~mstorey/papers/jss.pdf • Margaret-Anne Storey, Hausi A. Müller, "Manipulating and

documenting software structures using SHriMP views", International Conference on Software Maintenance (ICSM '95) (ICSM), 1995

• Rob Lintern, Jeff Michaud, Margaret-Anne Storey, Xiaomin Wu, "Plugging-in Visualization: Experiences Integrating a Visualization Tool with Eclipse", 2003 ACM symposium on Software visualization, 2003

• Theories, Methods and Tools in Program Comprehension: Past, Present and Future, M.-A. Storey, IWPC 2005 (also SCP 2006)

• Cognitive Support in Software Engineering Tools: A Distributed Cognition FrameworkA Walenstein – 2002.

• S. Easterbrook, J. Singer, M.-A. Storey and D. Damian, Selecting Empirical Methods,http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~sme/papers/2007/SelectingEmpiricalMethods.pdf


References (4)• Margaret-Anne Storey, Li-Te Cheng, Peter C. Rigby, R.

Ian Bull, "Shared Waypoints and Social Tagging to Support Collaboration in Software Development", CSCW 2006: ACM Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), 2006

• Margaret-Anne Storey, Li-Te Cheng, Janice Singer, M. Muller, Del Myers, Jody Ryall, "How Programmers can Turn Comments into Waypoints for Code Navigation", International Conference on Software Maintenance (ICSM), 2007

• Li-Te Cheng, Michael Desmond, Margaret-Anne Storey "Presentations by Programmers for Programmers", 29th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE), 2007


Icpc 2011 storey

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