. VISSOFT 2025

Program: Sunday, Monday

September 7, Sunday
08:00 - 08:45 Registration (in agreement with ICSME)
Location: Level 0, Foyer
08:45 - 09:00 Opening
(Opening Presentation)
09:00 - 10:00 Keynote
Session Chair: Craig Anslow
Location: Room 260-040
Software, Abstraction, and Visualisation
James Noble
10:00 - 10:30 Coffee Break
Location: Level 0, Foyer
10:30 - 12:00 1st Papers Session
Session Chair: David Moreno-Lumbreras
Location: Room 260-040
Sonifying and Visualizing the Heartbeat of Evolving Software Systems
Carmen Armenti, Marco Raglianti and Michele Lanza
RESEARCH
EVOSCAT: Exploring Software Change Dynamics in Large-Scale Historical Datasets
Souhaila Serbout, Diana Carolina Munoz Hurtado, Hassan Atwi, Edoardo Riggio and Cesare Pautasso
Pre-print 		TOOLS
Visualizing cloud-native applications with KubeDiagrams
Philippe Merle and Fabio Petrillo
TOOLS
FlameGraph AR: Immersive Visualization of CPU Profiles in Augmented Reality
Tiara Natalia Rojas Stambuk, Luis Fernando Gil-Gareca, Juan Pablo Sandoval Alcocer, Leonel Merino and David Moreno-Lumbreras
POSTER
Flexible Snapshot Creation in Debugging Sessions for Code Cities
Lukas Damerau, Malte Hansen and Wilhelm Hasselbring
Pre-print - Video 		POSTER
Visualization of the Linux Kernel With ExplorViz
Malte Hansen, Lukas Damerau, Daniel König and Wilhelm Hasselbring
Pre-print - Video 		CHALLENGE
Visualizing The Linux Kernel Performance with FlameGraph AR
Tiara Rojas-Stambuk, Luis Fernando Gil-Gareca, Juan Pablo Sandoval Alcocer, Leonel Merino and David Moreno-Lumbreras
CHALLENGE
Streamlining Analyses on the Linux Kernel with DUKS
Rafael Passos, Arthur Pilone, David Tadokoro and Paulo Meirelles
CHALLENGE
12:00 - 13:30 Lunch Break
Location: Level 0, Foyer
13:30 - 15:00 2nd Papers Session
Session Chair: Gregorio Robles
Location: Room 260-040
Trace-Based Bytecode Interpreter Visualization for Compiler Construction Education
Tobias Herber and Markus Weninger
Pre-print - Video    Open Research Object Badje Open Research Object & Research Object Reviewed Badge Research Object Reviewed 		RESEARCH
HeapKeep: Exploring Novel Codebases Through an RPG Interface
Ryan Bissett, John Loane and Peter Morris
TOOLS
Playable Code: Generating a Computer Game to Grasp the Complexity of Software
Kensei Hamamoto, Ryota Mizutani, Shu Uyama and Masateru Tsunoda
POSTER
Real-Time XR Visualizations of Code Metrics in the IDE
David Moreno-Lumbreras, Gregorio Robles and Adrián Montes Linares
Pre-print - Video    Open Research Object Badje Open Research Object & Research Object Reviewed Badge Research Object Reviewed 		POSTER
Representing Linux Commits With A Heatmap Graph
Adrian Volpe and Esteban Parra
CHALLENGE
Debian Bug Resolution Visualization
Christina Clements and Esteban Parra
Open Research Object Badje Open Research Object & Research Object Reviewed Badge Research Object Reviewed 		CHALLENGE
Visualizing Linux Kernel Contributor Networks In Java
Ella McDevitt and Esteban Parra
CHALLENGE
Interactive 3D Graph Visualization
Polina Iaremchuk and Esteban Parra
Open Research Object Badje Open Research Object & Research Object Reviewed Badge Research Object Reviewed 		CHALLENGE
15:00 - 15:30 Coffee Break
Location: Level 0, Foyer
15:30 - 17:30 Tools, Posters & Challenge
September 8, Monday
08:45 - 10:00 Joint Keynote with SCAM
Session Chair: Craig Anslow, Leonel MerinoLocation: Case Room 260-051
Visualizing Program State in the Pernosco Debugger
Robert O’Callahan
10:00 - 10:30 Coffee Break
Location: Level 0, Foyer
10:30 - 12:00 3rd Papers Session
Session Chair: Malte Hansen
Location: Room 260-040
DebtQuest: Discover Technical Debt Management Issues with Survey Visualization
Marius Irgens, Antonio Martini, Mads Boye, Jan Henrik Gundelsby and Mili Orucevic
RESEARCH
Visualizing and Exploring Data Access in Microservices Using Interactive Treemaps
Maxime André, Marco Raglianti, Anthony Cleve and Michele Lanza
RESEARCH
Towards Visualizing Educational Block-Based Scratch Code with the City Metaphor
Gregorio Robles, Daniel Escobar-Morales, Sergio Montes-León, Jesús Moreno-León, Guillermo Pons-Castro and David Moreno-Lumbreras
NIER
Skylines: Visualizing Object-Oriented Software Systems Through Class Contours
Mattia Giannaccari, Marco Raglianti and Michele Lanza
Pre-print 		NIER
ChangePrism: Visualizing the Essence of Code Changes
Lei Chen, Michele Lanza and Shinpei Hayashi
Pre-print - Video 		NIER
12:00 - 13:30 Lunch Break
Location: Level 0, Foyer
13:30 - 15:00 4th Papers Session
Session Chair: Takashi Kobayashi
Location: Room 260-040
Semantic Zoom and Mini-Maps for Software Cities
Malte Hansen, Jens Bamberg, Noe Baumann and Wilhelm Hasselbring
Pre-print - Video 		RESEARCH
Visualizing Data Access Traces in Microservices Using Animated Heat Treemaps
Maxime De Rycke, Maxime André, Marco Raglianti, Anthony Cleve and Michele Lanza
NIER
Towards Higher Motivation to Perform Software Comprehension Tasks Through Gamification
David Heidrich, René Gökmen, Andreas Schreiber and Christoph Bichlmeier
NIER
Large Language Models as Visualization Agents for Immersive Binary Reverse Engineering
Dennis Brown and Samuel Mulder
Pre-print - Video 		NIER
HTML Structure Exploration in 3D Software Cities
Malte Hansen, David Moreno-Lumbreras and Wilhelm Hasselbring
Pre-print - Video 		NIER
15:00 - 15:30 Coffee Break
Location: Level 0, Foyer
15:30 - 17:30 MIP Talk, Town Hall, Awards & Closing
Session Chair: Jesús, Raula, Leonel, Craig
(Closing Presentation)
18:30 - 22:00 Joint Social Event with SCAM
The Wharfside Function Centre

Software, Abstraction, and Visualisation, James Noble

Abstract. Abstraction is rather out of fashion in contemporary computer science. Why waste time and effort struggling to design interfaces, APIs, or domain models when vibe-coding firms are valued in the billions, when UML is more despised than COBOL, and when people have "had enough of experts" (carbon based experts, anyway)? Why try to visualise the design and operation of our computer systems, let alone formalise or attempt to understand them, when we can talk to our programs as easily as Adam & Eve could talk to the snake in the garden of Eden?

In this keynote, I'll argue that while current commodity laptops are tens of thousands of times more powerful than the ZX81 that I started on, they're not ten thousand times better at supporting programming, at helping people to learn how to program, and especially not at helping people understand what their programs do. I'll argue that the way people relate to computers is based on human psychology, rather than machine performance. Finally, I'll speculate that instead of bringing an end to programming, we are just as likely to be on the verge of a new beginning.

Bio. James Noble is an independent creative researcher & programmer based in Wellington, New Zealand. After completing honours and doctoral degrees at Victoria University of Wellington (VUW), James worked at the University of Technology, Sydney, the Microsoft Research Institute at Macquarie University, and is recovering from a long stint as professor of computer science & software engineering at VUW. James’s research centres around software design. This includes the design of the users’ interface, the parts of software that users have to deal with every day, and the programmers’ interface, the internal structures and organisations of software that programmers see only when they are designing, building, or modifying software. His research in both of these areas is coloured by a longstanding interest in object-oriented approaches to design, and topics he has studied range from aliasing and object ownership, programming languages, design patterns, agile methodology, via usability, visualisation and computer music, to postmodernism and the semiotics of programming.


Visualizing Program State in the Pernosco Debugger, Robert O’Callahan (Joint Keynote with SCAM)

Abstract. "Omniscient" debuggers have efficient and complete access to all program states that occurred during some run(s) of the program. The question then is, what is the best way to visualize this data to enable users to debug their programs in the most effective, time-efficient and fun manner?
The "Pernosco" debugger is one attempt to answer this question.
I will describe the principles we used when designing the Pernosco interface, some of the novel visualizations of dynamic state supported by Pernosco, and what we learned as we built it and deployed it to customers. In particular I will focus on the value of visualizing state across time as opposed to traditional debuggers that mostly only render the state at a given point in time. I will try to distinguish visualizations that are useful from those that are merely visually appealing. A critical aspect of debugging is mapping machine state back to "source level" state, typically via "debuginfo" emitted by the compiler. I'll talk about how Pernosco visualizes the relationship of state to source code, and how that could be extended in the future if we had a deeper understanding of the source code.

Bio. Robert O'Callahan did academic research (PhD Carnegie Mellon, IBM Research) for several years and then joined Mozilla to work on the Firefox browser engine for many more years, becoming a Distinguished Engineer at Mozilla. While at Mozilla he led the rr project to develop a practical, open-source record-and-replay debugger; rr has many users and he continues to maintain it today. In 2016 he left Mozilla to found Pernosco, a commercial omniscient debugger built on rr. In 2022 he joined Google Research to work on various projects mostly unrelated to debugging. He lives in New Zealand and enjoys hiking, board games and lay preaching.