MIT CodePhage: Automatically fixes software bugs
MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) has devised a groundbreaking way to automatically fix software errors by borrowing "healthy" code from other applications.
More specifically, this is a discovery by MIT's CSAIL (Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory) which uses code from other applications to fix the error without having access to the original source code.
The CodePhage technique works on the same logical basis as organ transplantation in humans, with the only difference that we are now talking about an application that is experiencing problems due to a bug. The "donor" is any other, healthy application that offers a part of its own code.
Code Phage identifies the bug in the application and then immediately searches for possible fixes from other installed applications. When a potential "donor" code is found, a sample is taken and tested for a match, without requiring access to the source code. This process is repeated continuously until a suitable donor is identified.
As the creators of Code Phage themselves report to MIT News, what is particularly interesting is the fact that the solution does not require applications to be written in the same language in order for one to be able to lend code to the other.
Code Phage was presented by MIT researchers at the Association for Computing Machinery's Programming Language Design and Implementation meeting.
source: pestaola.gr
