As a developer, it is often complex to foresee the impact of changes in source code on how users will then use the software. For example, it is time-consuming to find out all components that will be impacted by a change or estimate the impact on the usability of a failing piece of code.
In this talk, we present “code call lens”, a plugin for Visual Studio Code that helps developers to understand the importance of source code based on how often users use specific parts of a monitored software. In short, “code call lens” displays a little information above each method: how often this method was called in the last 30 days and how the intensity of calls proceeded every day.
With this information, the developer gets a hint of how important (how much used) a method is and can decide with how much care he or she is going to modify it. The plug-in aims to increase the awareness developers have about the importance of source code in an unobtrusive way, helping them to prioritize their effort to quality assurance, technical excellence, and usability. code_call_lens can be downloaded from GitHub at https://github.com/xxMUROxx/vscode.code_call_lens
This talk will present the plugin, how it works, and how companies could collaborate with the university to extend it.
