Exploring Experiences with Automated Program Repair in Practice

Automated program repair, also known as APR, is an approach for automatically repairing software faults. There is a large amount of research on automated program repair, but very little offers in-depth insights into how practitioners think about and employ APR in practice. To learn more about practitioners' perspectives and experiences with current APR tools and techniques, we administered a survey, which received valid responses from 331 software practitioners. We analyzed survey responses to gain insights regarding factors that correlate with APR awareness, experience, and use. We established a strong correlation between APR awareness and tool use and attributes including job position, company size, total coding experience, and preferred language of software practitioners. We also found that practitioners are using other forms of support, such as co-workers and ChatGPT, more frequently than APR tools when fixing software defects. We learned about the drawbacks that practitioners encounter while utilizing existing APR tools and the impact that each drawback has on their practice. Our findings provide implications for research and practice centered on development, adoption, and use of APR.