Newcomers’ Experiences during Debugging: A Cognitive Inclusivity Perspective using GenderMag

Context: Debugging is a critical practice in software engineering that enables software engineersto ensure the correctness of code by identifying and resolving bugs. It also benefits newcomers asit helps them go through the codebase, understand its structure, and learn about its functionality.Recent research has uncovered that some software engineering tools are not well suited to all waysof thinking, imposing an additional cognitive overhead on individuals whose cognitive styles are notwell-supported by the tool. While biases have been explored in other software tools, little is knownabout whether debugging tools exhibit cognitive biases and introduce “inclusivity bugs”.Objective: This paper addresses this gap by examining inclusivity bugs that newcomers encounterwhen using the PyCharm debugger.Methods: In this study, we performed a controlled lab experiment where we observed 24 softwareengineering students with little to no experience as they used the PyCharm debugger for a set of tasks.We used a think-aloud protocol to capture participants%E2%80%99 thoughts throughout the experiment. Then,we conducted a thematic analysis, guided by our research question, to identify potential biases in thetool. We used the GenderMag framework to examine the relationship between cognitive style and theinclusivity bugs.Results: We detail our findings on 21 inclusivity bugs which are caused by 2 main reasons:discoverability and learnability. We identified trends that showed individuals with low self-efficacy,low motivation, risk-averse tendencies, and those who prefer to learn by processes and gatherinformation selectively were the ones who faced the most challenges.Conclusion: The findings provide insights into how debuggers can be made more inclusive. They alsohighlight the need for continuous evaluation and adaptation of SE tools and practices to ensure theymeet the needs of all users with diverse cognitive styles to ensure fairness

In *Information and Software Technology