Exploring Analogical Reasoning and History Use in Software Re-purposing

Today, code reuse is typically limited to programmers reusing code that does exactly what they want to do, through APIs and modules, for example. Yet, the space of existing programs that could be reused is broader. In this poster, we consider reuse through re-purposing tasks in which programmers modify an existing codebase to implement a related task. Because this process requires that users build a relationship between the source code and the target program, we examine it using analogical reasoning. To understand the process programmers take and the barriers they encounter when performing reuse through re-purposing tasks, we conducted an exploratory study involving sixteen participants completing two tasks. We find that programmers have difficulty mapping analogies related to the underlying logic of source code, but easily identify visual analogies like interface structure. We discuss how information about a code's history can be useful during reuse, and in identifying logical analogies.