Mea culpa: How developers fix their own simple bugs differently from other developers

TL;DR

This study investigates how code authorship influences bug-fixing behavior, revealing that original authors and other developers differ in fix size, scope, and speed, with implications for tailored bug-fixing tools.

Contribution

It provides a comparative analysis of bug fixes by authors and non-authors, highlighting differences in characteristics and fixing patterns in Java projects.

Findings

44.3% of bugs are fixed by different developers

Authors fix bugs faster than others

Author fixes tend to be larger and more comprehensive

Abstract

In this work, we study how the authorship of code affects bug-fixing commits using the SStuBs dataset, a collection of single-statement bug fix changes in popular Java Maven projects. More specifically, we study the differences in characteristics between simple bug fixes by the original author -- that is, the developer who submitted the bug-inducing commit -- and by different developers (i.e., non-authors). Our study shows that nearly half (i.e., 44.3%) of simple bugs are fixed by a different developer. We found that bug fixes by the original author and by different developers differed qualitatively and quantitatively. We observed that bug-fixing time by authors is much shorter than that of other developers. We also found that bug-fixing commits by authors tended to be larger in size and scope, and address multiple issues, whereas bug-fixing commits by other developers tended to be smaller and more focused on the bug itself. Future research can further study the different patterns in bug-fixing and create more tailored tools based on the developer's needs.