{"id":166407,"date":"2014-06-01T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2014-06-01T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/msr-research-item\/code-hunt-searching-for-secret-code-for-fun\/"},"modified":"2018-10-16T20:16:45","modified_gmt":"2018-10-17T03:16:45","slug":"code-hunt-searching-for-secret-code-for-fun","status":"publish","type":"msr-research-item","link":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/publication\/code-hunt-searching-for-secret-code-for-fun\/","title":{"rendered":"Code Hunt: Searching for Secret Code for Fun"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"asset-content\">\n<p>Learning to code can be made more effective and sustainable if it is perceived as fun by the learner. Code Hunt uses puzzles that players have to explore by means of clues presented as test cases. Players iteratively modify their code to match the functional behaviour of secret solutions. This way of learning to code is very different to learning from a specification. It is essentially re-engineering from test cases. Code Hunt is based on the test\/clue generation of Pex, a white-box test generation tool that uses dynamic symbolic execution. Pex performs a guided search to determine feasible execution paths. Conceptually, solving a puzzle is the manual process of con- ducting search-based test generation: the \u201ctest data\u201d to be generated by the player is the player\u2019s code, and the \u201cfitness values\u201d that reflect the closeness of the player\u2019s code to the secret code are the clues (i.e., Pex-generated test cases). This paper is the first one to describe Code Hunt and its extensions over its precursor Pex4Fun. Code Hunt represents a high-impact educational gaming platform that not only internally leverages fitness values to guide test\/clue generation but also externally offers fun user experiences where search-based test generation is manually emulated. Because the amount of data is growing all the time, the entire system runs in the cloud on Windows Azure.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><!-- .asset-content --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Learning to code can be made more effective and sustainable if it is perceived as fun by the learner. Code Hunt uses puzzles that players have to explore by means of clues presented as test cases. Players iteratively modify their code to match the functional behaviour of secret solutions. This way of learning to code [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"template":"","meta":{"msr-url-field":"","msr-podcast-episode":"","msrModifiedDate":"","msrModifiedDateEnabled":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"_classifai_error":"","footnotes":""},"msr-content-type":[3],"msr-research-highlight":[],"research-area":[13560],"msr-publication-type":[193716],"msr-product-type":[],"msr-focus-area":[],"msr-platform":[],"msr-download-source":[],"msr-locale":[268875],"msr-post-option":[],"msr-field-of-study":[],"msr-conference":[],"msr-journal":[],"msr-impact-theme":[],"msr-pillar":[],"class_list":["post-166407","msr-research-item","type-msr-research-item","status-publish","hentry","msr-research-area-programming-languages-software-engineering","msr-locale-en_us"],"msr_publishername":"","msr_edition":"Proceedings of the International Conference on Software Engineering (Workshops)","msr_affiliation":"","msr_published_date":"2014-06-01","msr_host":"","msr_duration":"","msr_version":"","msr_speaker":"","msr_other_contributors":"","msr_booktitle":"","msr_pages_string":"23-26","msr_chapter":"","msr_isbn":"","msr_journal":"","msr_volume":"","msr_number":"","msr_editors":"","msr_series":"","msr_issue":"","msr_organization":"","msr_how_published":"","msr_notes":"","msr_highlight_text":"","msr_release_tracker_id":"","msr_original_fields_of_study":"","msr_download_urls":"","msr_external_url":"","msr_secondary_video_url":"","msr_longbiography":"","msr_microsoftintellectualproperty":1,"msr_main_download":"204871","msr_publicationurl":"","msr_doi":"","msr_publication_uploader":[{"type":"file","title":"CodeHunt%20SBST%202014b.pdf","viewUrl":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/CodeHunt20SBST202014b.pdf","id":204871,"label_id":0}],"msr_related_uploader":"","msr_attachments":[{"id":204871,"url":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/CodeHunt20SBST202014b.pdf"}],"msr-author-ordering":[{"type":"user_nicename","value":"nikolait","user_id":33102,"rest_url":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/microsoft-research\/v1\/researchers?person=nikolait"},{"type":"user_nicename","value":"jbishop","user_id":32195,"rest_url":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/microsoft-research\/v1\/researchers?person=jbishop"},{"type":"text","value":"R. Nigel Horspool","user_id":0,"rest_url":false},{"type":"user_nicename","value":"b-danper","user_id":31189,"rest_url":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/microsoft-research\/v1\/researchers?person=b-danper"},{"type":"user_nicename","value":"b-taoxie","user_id":31319,"rest_url":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/microsoft-research\/v1\/researchers?person=b-taoxie"}],"msr_impact_theme":[],"msr_research_lab":[],"msr_event":[],"msr_group":[144812],"msr_project":[171435,171432,171156,170993],"publication":[],"video":[],"download":[],"msr_publication_type":"inproceedings","related_content":{"projects":[{"ID":171435,"post_title":"Code Hunt Community","post_name":"code-hunt-community","post_type":"msr-project","post_date":"2015-02-14 17:35:20","post_modified":"2020-03-13 16:58:01","post_status":"publish","permalink":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/project\/code-hunt-community\/","post_excerpt":"Code Hunt is a serious educational game. The Code Hunt community is interested in all aspects of research and development around the game, including analysis of the data and development of the platform. Join the Community Get updates. Tell us what you are doing. Sign up here. Announcing CHESE 2016 The 2nd Int\u2019l Code Hunt Workshop on Educational Software Engineering (CHESE 2016) will be held in Seattle, WA, on November 18 in conjunction with FSE&hellip;","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-project\/171435"}]}},{"ID":171432,"post_title":"Code Hunt","post_name":"code-hunt","post_type":"msr-project","post_date":"2015-02-04 16:56:12","post_modified":"2020-03-13 16:57:52","post_status":"publish","permalink":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/project\/code-hunt\/","post_excerpt":"Code Hunt is a serious gaming platform for coding contests and practicing programming skills. It is based on the symbolic white box execution engine, Pex. Code Hunt is unique as an online coding platform in that each puzzle is presented with test cases only, no specification. Players have to first work out the pattern and then code the answer. Code Hunt has been used by over 350,000 players as of August 2016. Data from the&hellip;","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-project\/171432"}]}},{"ID":171156,"post_title":"Pex4Fun","post_name":"pex4fun","post_type":"msr-project","post_date":"2013-06-06 16:19:35","post_modified":"2017-06-02 11:25:43","post_status":"publish","permalink":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/project\/pex4fun\/","post_excerpt":"Pex4Fun is a browser-based teaching and learning environment targeting teachers and students for introductory to advanced programming or software engineering courses. At the core of the platform is an automated grading engine based on symbolic execution. In Pex4Fun, teachers can create virtual classrooms, customize existing courses, and publish new learning material including learning games. Try it out on the web Go to www.pex4fun.com, and click Learn to start tutorials.","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-project\/171156"}]}},{"ID":170993,"post_title":"Tools for Software Engineers","post_name":"tools-for-software-engineers","post_type":"msr-project","post_date":"2012-06-29 06:20:39","post_modified":"2021-11-12 09:09:39","post_status":"publish","permalink":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/project\/tools-for-software-engineers\/","post_excerpt":"The mission of Microsoft's One Engineering System (formerly known as Tools for Software Engineers) team is to enable the world's best product engineering teams with world-class tools and systems that help them ship products their customers love. 1ES provides tools and services to cover the full spectrum of the engineering life-cycle, from the developer desktop to product deployment. 1ES focuses on engineering solutions that mitigate the unique scale challenges that Microsoft teams face, both in&hellip;","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-project\/170993"}]}}]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-research-item\/166407"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-research-item"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/msr-research-item"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-research-item\/166407\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":525746,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-research-item\/166407\/revisions\/525746"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=166407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"msr-content-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-content-type?post=166407"},{"taxonomy":"msr-research-highlight","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-research-highlight?post=166407"},{"taxonomy":"msr-research-area","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/research-area?post=166407"},{"taxonomy":"msr-publication-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-publication-type?post=166407"},{"taxonomy":"msr-product-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-product-type?post=166407"},{"taxonomy":"msr-focus-area","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-focus-area?post=166407"},{"taxonomy":"msr-platform","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-platform?post=166407"},{"taxonomy":"msr-download-source","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-download-source?post=166407"},{"taxonomy":"msr-locale","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-locale?post=166407"},{"taxonomy":"msr-post-option","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-post-option?post=166407"},{"taxonomy":"msr-field-of-study","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-field-of-study?post=166407"},{"taxonomy":"msr-conference","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-conference?post=166407"},{"taxonomy":"msr-journal","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-journal?post=166407"},{"taxonomy":"msr-impact-theme","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-impact-theme?post=166407"},{"taxonomy":"msr-pillar","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-pillar?post=166407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}