Software engineering and LLMs
Exploring the intersection of software engineering and large language models.
About Youssef Abdelsalam
I like to build practical products that solve real problems.
I'm Youssef Abdelsalam, a PhD student in computer science at Saarland Informatics Campus. Alongside my academic work, I like to build useful apps and tools, including Halaqa.
Saarland Informatics CampusPhDApps and tools
Research focus
Current work around software engineering, program comprehension, and LLMs.
Program comprehension
Using LLMs to analyze, understand, and support program comprehension.
SE and ML
Applying program-comprehension insights to evaluate, fine-tune, and align LLMs with human programmers.
Selected publications
All publications A few recent papers from my work.
2026ICSETo appear
Are Humans and LLMs Confused by the Same Code? An Empirical Study on Fixation-Related Potentials and LLM Perplexity
Youssef Abdelsalam, Norman Peitek, Anna-Maria Maurer, Mariya Toneva, and Sven Apel
Proceedings of the International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE), ACM, April 2026.
2026ICPCTo appear
Eye-Tracking Insights into the Effects of Type Annotations and Identifier Naming
Nils Alznauer, Norman Peitek, Youssef Abdelsalam, Annabelle Bergum, Marvin Wyrich, and Sven Apel
Proceedings of the International Conference on Program Comprehension (ICPC), ACM, April 2026.
2026EMSEPublished
The Effect of Comments on Program Comprehension: An Eye-Tracking Study
Youssef Abdelsalam, Norman Peitek, Annabelle Bergum, and Sven Apel
Empirical Software Engineering, Volume 31, article number 94, March 2026.