A Survey on Natural Language Processing for Programming

Qingfu Zhu, Xianzhen Luo, Fang Liu, Cuiyun Gao, Wanxiang Che


Abstract
Natural language processing for programming aims to use NLP techniques to assist programming. It is increasingly prevalent for its effectiveness in improving productivity. Distinct from natural language, a programming language is highly structured and functional. Constructing a structure-based representation and a functionality-oriented algorithm is at the heart of program understanding and generation. In this paper, we conduct a systematic review covering tasks, datasets, evaluation methods, techniques, and models from the perspective of the structure-based and functionality-oriented property, aiming to understand the role of the two properties in each component. Based on the analysis, we illustrate unexplored areas and suggest potential directions for future work.
Anthology ID:
2024.lrec-main.149
Volume:
Proceedings of the 2024 Joint International Conference on Computational Linguistics, Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC-COLING 2024)
Month:
May
Year:
2024
Address:
Torino, Italia
Editors:
Nicoletta Calzolari, Min-Yen Kan, Veronique Hoste, Alessandro Lenci, Sakriani Sakti, Nianwen Xue
Venues:
LREC | COLING
SIG:
Publisher:
ELRA and ICCL
Note:
Pages:
1690–1704
Language:
URL:
https://aclanthology.org/2024.lrec-main.149
DOI:
Bibkey:
Cite (ACL):
Qingfu Zhu, Xianzhen Luo, Fang Liu, Cuiyun Gao, and Wanxiang Che. 2024. A Survey on Natural Language Processing for Programming. In Proceedings of the 2024 Joint International Conference on Computational Linguistics, Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC-COLING 2024), pages 1690–1704, Torino, Italia. ELRA and ICCL.
Cite (Informal):
A Survey on Natural Language Processing for Programming (Zhu et al., LREC-COLING 2024)
Copy Citation:
PDF:
https://aclanthology.org/2024.lrec-main.149.pdf