Tue 6 Nov 2018 15:52 - 16:15 at Horizons 10-11 - Developer Studies Chair(s): Thomas LaToza

Technical question and answer Q&A platforms, such as Stack Overflow, provide a platform for users to ask and answer questions about a wide variety of programming topics. These platforms accumulate a large amount of knowledge, including hundreds of thousands lines of source code. Developers can benefit from the source code that is attached to the questions and answers on Q&A platforms by copying or learning from (parts of) it. By understanding how developers utilize source code from Q&A platforms, we can provide insights for researchers which can be used to improve next-generation Q&A platforms to help developers reuse source code fast and easily. In this paper, we first conduct an exploratory study on 289 files from 182 open-source projects, which contain source code that has an explicit reference to a Stack Overflow post. Our goal is to understand how developers utilize code from Q&A platforms and to reveal barriers that may make code reuse more difficult. In 31.5% of the studied files, developers needed to modify source code from Stack Overflow to make it work in their own projects. The degree of required modification varied from simply renaming variables to rewriting the whole algorithm. Developers sometimes chose to implement an algorithm from scratch based on the descriptions from Stack Overflow answers, even if there was an implementation readily available in the post. In 35.5% of the studied files, developers used Stack Overflow posts as an information source for later reference. To further understand the barriers of reusing code and to obtain suggestions for improving the code reuse process on Q&A platforms, we conducted a survey with 453 open-source developers who are also on Stack Overflow. We found that the top 3 barriers that make it difficult for developers to reuse code from Stack Overflow are: (1) too much code modification required to fit in their projects, (2) incomprehensive code, and (3) low code quality. We summarized and analyzed all survey responses and we identified that developers suggest improvements for future Q&A platforms along the following dimensions: code quality, information enhancement & management, data organization, license, and the human factor. For instance, developers suggest to improve the code quality by adding an integrated validator that can test source code online, and an outdated code detection mechanism. Our findings can be used as a roadmap for researchers and developers to improve code reuse.

Tue 6 Nov

Displayed time zone: Guadalajara, Mexico City, Monterrey change

15:30 - 17:00
Developer StudiesResearch Papers / Journal-First at Horizons 10-11
Chair(s): Thomas LaToza George Mason University
15:30
22m
Talk
Programmers do not Favor Lambda Expressions for Concurrent Object-Oriented Code
Journal-First
DOI
15:52
22m
Talk
How Do Developers Utilize Source Code from Stack Overflow?
Journal-First
Yuhao Wu , Shaowei Wang Queen's University, Cor-Paul Bezemer University of Alberta, Canada, Katsuro Inoue Osaka University
DOI
16:15
22m
Talk
Towards a Theory of Software Development Expertise
Research Papers
Sebastian Baltes University of Trier, Stephan Diehl Computer Science, University Trier, Germany
Pre-print
16:37
22m
Full-paper
What Makes a Code Change Easier to Review? An Empirical Investigation on Code Change Reviewability
Research Papers
Achyudh Ram University of Waterloo, Anand Ashok Sawant Delft University of Technology, Marco Castelluccio Mozilla Foundation, UK, Alberto Bacchelli University of Zurich
Link to publication DOI Pre-print Media Attached