Augmenting Source Code Lines with Sample Variable Values

TL;DR

RuntimeSamp is a practical approach that collects and displays sample variable values during normal program execution, aiding understanding and debugging by providing concrete runtime data directly in the source code editor.

Contribution

It introduces RuntimeSamp, a simple method for augmenting source code with sampled variable values collected during regular execution, addressing usability questions and suggesting future research directions.

Findings

Sampled variable values can be effectively collected during normal execution.

Displaying variable samples at the end of source lines aids understanding.

The approach raises important questions about efficiency and usability.

Abstract

Source code is inherently abstract, which makes it difficult to understand. Activities such as debugging can reveal concrete runtime details, including the values of variables. However, they require that a developer explicitly requests these data for a specific execution moment. We present a simple approach, RuntimeSamp, which collects sample variable values during normal executions of a program by a programmer. These values are then displayed in an ambient way at the end of each line in the source code editor. We discuss questions which should be answered for this approach to be usable in practice, such as how to efficiently record the values and when to display them. We provide partial answers to these questions and suggest future research directions.