Work in progress! Details may still change. The schedule and topics will be finalized by the kick-off meeting on 18.04.2024 at the latest.

Artificial Intelligence for Coding Assistance

Coding Assistance (CA) refers to automated tools that help with developer tasks like code completion, bug detection, etc., like the ones we get access to using our favorite IDEs like IntelliJ or Eclipse. Recently, there has been a surge of research into utilizing artificial intelligence (AI), especially deep neural networks and transformers, to assist with code completion. The most famous manifestation of this is GitHub’s Copilot project. However, these approaches also have similar challenges, primarily because they rely on code in the wild to learn. Code written by human beings in the wild has its own issues, like bugs, vulnerabilities, and privacy concerns. In this context, it is of paramount importance to understand the state of the art in the field of AI for code assistance and work on future research.

In this seminar, we will explore current scientific work from the area of applying AI for CA. Under the guidance of one of our advisors, you will work on different topics in small groups. Details on the available topics will be announced at the first event. We provide you with an introduction to your topic and some starting resources. You will then explore your topic, find further resources, and summarize and discuss your findings in a short paper. We encourage you to develop and outline new ideas in your paper that could advance the current state of the art. At the end of the seminar, you will present your findings to the other participants.

Optionally, you can extend this seminar with a 6 CP project to develop and implement an approach related to your topic (TUCaN details will be explained in the first meeting). If a good research paper comes out of this, you can submit it to a workshop and, if it gets accepted, even travel there to present it.

Learning Outcomes

The students develop a deeper understanding of artificial intelligence for coding assistance. The students learn to work with scientific content and to develop new research ideas, expanding on previous work. This involves literature research and scientific writing practice. The students develop the ability to collaborate on scientific writing.

Moodle

Please also enrol in our Moodle course. It will be used for submissions and provides a forum for discussing questions.

Advisors

This seminar is provided to you by the Software Technology Group of the Technical University of Darmstadt.

Editions