Following breadcrumbs in code: What accidentally committed Ad-Hoc logs reveal about developer comprehension
Summary
The article presents a large-scale empirical study of ad-hoc or printf-style logging by mining accidental commits and analyzing live-streaming coding sessions across Java, JavaScript, and Python. It reveals patterns in where ad-hoc logs are placed, what is logged, why developers rely on them, and how logs are inserted and removed, with implications for debugging tooling and runtime understanding.