Analyzing Prompt Influence on Automated Method Generation: An Empirical Study with Copilot | Proceedings of the 32nd IEEE/ACM International Conference on Program Comprehension (2024)

Analyzing Prompt Influence on Automated Method Generation: An Empirical Study with Copilot | Proceedings of the 32nd IEEE/ACM International Conference on Program Comprehension (2)

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ICPC '24: Proceedings of the 32nd IEEE/ACM International Conference on Program ComprehensionApril 2024Pages 24–34https://doi.org/10.1145/3643916.3644409

Published:13 June 2024Publication HistoryAnalyzing Prompt Influence on Automated Method Generation: An Empirical Study with Copilot | Proceedings of the 32nd IEEE/ACM International Conference on Program Comprehension (7)

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ICPC '24: Proceedings of the 32nd IEEE/ACM International Conference on Program Comprehension

Analyzing Prompt Influence on Automated Method Generation: An Empirical Study with Copilot

Pages 24–34

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Analyzing Prompt Influence on Automated Method Generation: An Empirical Study with Copilot | Proceedings of the 32nd IEEE/ACM International Conference on Program Comprehension (8)

ABSTRACT

Generative AI is changing the way developers interact with software systems, providing services that can produce and deliver new content, crafted to satisfy the actual needs of developers. For instance, developers can ask for new code directly from within their IDEs by writing natural language prompts, and integrated services based on generative AI, such as Copilot, immediately respond to prompts by providing ready-to-use code snippets. Formulating the prompt appropriately, and incorporating the useful information while avoiding any information overload, can be an important factor in obtaining the right piece of code. The task of designing good prompts is known as prompt engineering.

In this paper, we systematically investigate the influence of eight prompt features on the style and the content of prompts, on the level of correctness, complexity, size, and similarity to the developers' code of the generated code. We specifically consider the task of using Copilot with 124,800 prompts obtained by systematically combining the eight considered prompt features to generate the implementation of 200 Java methods. Results show how some prompt features, such as the presence of examples and the summary of the purpose of the method, can significantly influence the quality of the result.

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Analyzing Prompt Influence on Automated Method Generation: An Empirical Study with Copilot | Proceedings of the 32nd IEEE/ACM International Conference on Program Comprehension (55)

    Index Terms

    1. Analyzing Prompt Influence on Automated Method Generation: An Empirical Study with Copilot

      1. Software and its engineering

        1. Software notations and tools

          1. Development frameworks and environments

            1. Integrated and visual development environments

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        Analyzing Prompt Influence on Automated Method Generation: An Empirical Study with Copilot | Proceedings of the 32nd IEEE/ACM International Conference on Program Comprehension (56)

        ICPC '24: Proceedings of the 32nd IEEE/ACM International Conference on Program Comprehension

        April 2024

        487 pages

        ISBN:9798400705861

        DOI:10.1145/3643916

        • Chair:
        • Igor Steinmacher,
        • Co-chair:
        • Mario Linares-Vasquez,
        • Program Chair:
        • Kevin Patrick Moran,
        • Program Co-chair:
        • Olga Baysal

        This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution International 4.0 License.

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            Association for Computing Machinery

            New York, NY, United States

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            • Published: 13 June 2024

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            Analyzing Prompt Influence on Automated Method Generation: An Empirical Study with Copilot | Proceedings of the 32nd IEEE/ACM International Conference on Program Comprehension (57)

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            • prompt engineering
            • code generation
            • copilot

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            2025 IEEE/ACM 46th International Conference on Software Engineering

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