# An Empirical Comparison of Pre-Trained Models of Source Code

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2302.04026 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.04026/

## Key facts

- Cited by 25 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 8 Feb 2023.

## Built on by (most cited first, 25 of 25)

- [On the Use of Agentic Coding: An Empirical Study of Pull Requests on GitHub](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.14745/) (2025)
- [Evaluating Instruction-Tuned Large Language Models on Code Comprehension and Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.01240/) (2023)
- [CodeFusion: A Pre-trained Diffusion Model for Code Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.17680/) (2023)
- [An Empirical Study of Retrieval-Augmented Code Generation: Challenges and Opportunities](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.13742/) (2025)
- [Advising OpenMP Parallelization via a Graph-Based Approach with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.11999/) (2023)
- [RepoMasterEval: Evaluating Code Completion via Real-World Repositories](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.03519/) (2024)
- [Pitfalls in Language Models for Code Intelligence: A Taxonomy and Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.17903/) (2023)
- [Turbulence: Systematically and Automatically Testing Instruction-Tuned Large Language Models for Code](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.14856/) (2023)
- [FlakyFix: Using Large Language Models for Predicting Flaky Test Fix Categories and Test Code Repair](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.00012/) (2023)
- [MPI-rical: Data-Driven MPI Distributed Parallelism Assistance with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.09438/) (2023)
- [A Comprehensive Evaluation of Parameter-Efficient Fine-Tuning on Software Engineering Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.15614/) (2023)
- [Do Language Models Learn Semantics of Code? A Case Study in Vulnerability Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.04109/) (2023)
- [Do Current Language Models Support Code Intelligence for R Programming Language?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.07793/) (2024)
- [MoSE: Hierarchical Self-Distillation Enhances Early Layer Embeddings](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.03008/) (2025)
- [Redundancy and Concept Analysis for Code-trained Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.00875/) (2023)
- [Beyond Self-learned Attention: Mitigating Attention Bias in Transformer-based Models Using Attention Guidance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.16790/) (2024)
- [Agent-Driven Automatic Software Improvement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.16739/) (2024)
- [DocGen: Generating Detailed Parameter Docstrings in Python](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.06453/) (2023)
- [Studying Vulnerable Code Entities in R](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.04421/) (2024)
- [Transducer Tuning: Efficient Model Adaptation for Software Tasks Using Code Property Graphs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.13467/) (2024)
- [Streamlining Admission with LOR Insights: AI-Based Leadership Assessment in Online Master's Program](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.05513/) (2025)
- [ReDef: Do Code Language Models Truly Understand Code Changes for Just-in-Time Software Defect Prediction?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.09192/) (2025)
- [Selecting and Combining Large Language Models for Scalable Code Clone Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.15480/) (2025)
- [MANTRA: a Framework for Multi-stage Adaptive Noise TReAtment During Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.04319/) (2025)
- [Recall Before Rerank: Benchmarking Deep Learning Models for Large-Scale Code-to-Code Retrieval](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.27401/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

While a large number of pre-trained models of source code have been successfully developed and applied to a variety of software engineering (SE) tasks in recent years, our understanding of these pre-trained models is arguably fairly limited. With the goal of advancing our understanding of these models, we perform the first systematic empirical comparison of 19 recently-developed pre-trained models of source code on 13 SE tasks. To gain additional insights into these models, we adopt a recently-developed 4-dimensional categorization of pre-trained models, and subsequently investigate whether there are correlations between different categories of pre-trained models and their performances on different SE tasks.
