Developing a Mechanism to Study Code Trustworthiness

Presenter Information

Charles Walter, University of TulsaFollow
Rose Gamble, University of TulsaFollow
Gene Alarcon, Air Force Research LaboratoryFollow
Sarah Jessup, CSRA, Inc.Follow
Chris Calhoun, CSRA, Inc.Follow

Location

Hilton Waikoloa Village, Hawaii

Event Website

http://www.hicss.hawaii.edu

Start Date

1-4-2017

End Date

1-7-2017

Description

When software code is acquired from a third party or version control repository, programmers assign a level of trust to the code. This trust prompts them to use the code as-is, make minor changes, or rewrite it, which can increase costs and delay deployment. This paper discusses types of degradations to code based on readability and organization expectations and how to present that code as part of a study on programmer trust. Degradations were applied to sixteen of eighteen Java classes that were labeled as acquired from reputable or unknown sources. In a pilot study, participants were asked to determine a level of trustworthiness and whether they would use the code without changes. The results of the pilot study are presented to provide a baseline for the continuance of the study to a larger set of participants and to make adjustments to the presentation environment to improve user experience.