Effective communication of software development knowledge through community portals

Storey, Margaret-Anne

doi:10.1145/2025113.2025129

Cited by 28 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 29 publications

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“…This participation provides higher levels of social transparency [34] about the identity of internal developers therefore allowing external developers to interact with them. To illustrate this point, our data shows that Android developers (who work for Google) use specific communication channels to disseminate information about the documentation and official releases [35], so by taking advantage of their level of social transparency in social media they can promote the Android ecosystem to "external" developers.…”

Section: " [A14]mentioning

confidence: 98%

The Social Side of Software Platform Ecosystems

Souza

Filho

Miranda

et al. 2016

Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

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Software ecosystems as a paradigm for large-scale software development encompass a complex mix of technical, business, and social aspects. While significant research has been conducted to understand both the technical and business aspects, the social aspects of software ecosystems are less well understood. To close this gap, this paper presents the results of an empirical study aimed at understanding the influence of social aspects on developers' participation in software ecosystems. We conducted 25 interviews with mobile software developers and an online survey with 83 respondents from the mobile software development community. Our results point out a complex social system based on continued interaction and mutual support between different actors, including developers, friends, end users, developers from large companies, and online communities. These findings highlight the importance of social aspects in the sustainability of software ecosystems both during the initial adoption phase as well as for long-term permanence of developers.

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Section: " [A14]mentioning

confidence: 98%

The Social Side of Software Platform Ecosystems

Souza

Filho

Miranda

et al. 2016

Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

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“…Treude et al evaluated the nature of questions asked on StackOverflow with respect to programming language, question tags, and question types determined by manual coding of a sample of questions. They concluded that the community answers review, conceptual, and how-to questions more frequently than any other type, with review questions achieving a 92% accepted answer rate [21]. Posnett et al studied the nature of expertise among Stack Exchange participants and found that participation in online Q/A sites does not necessarily lead to increased expertise as measured by peer scoring [16].…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Using and Asking: APIs Used in the Android Market and Asked about in StackOverflow

Kavaler

Posnett

Gibler

et al. 2013

Lecture Notes in Computer Science

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Abstract. Programming is knowledge intensive. While it is well understood that programmers spend lots of time looking for information, with few exceptions, there is a significant lack of data on what information they seek, and why. Modern platforms, like Android, comprise complex APIs that often perplex programmers. We ask: which elements are confusing, and why? Increasingly, when programmers need answers, they turn to StackOverflow. This provides a novel opportunity. There are a vast number of applications for Android devices, which can be readily analyzed, and many traces of interactions on StackOverflow. These provide a complementary perspective on using and asking, and allow the two phenomena to be studied together. How does the market demand for the USE of an API drive the market for knowledge about it? Here, we analyze data from Android applications and StackOverflow together, to find out what it is that programmers want to know and why.

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“…T HE knowledge needed by software developers is captured in many forms of documentation, typically written by different individuals [53]. Despite the best efforts of documentation writers [14], there often remains a mismatch between the needs of documentation consumers and the knowledge provided in developer documentation.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Extracting Development Tasks to Navigate Software Documentation

Robillard

Dagenais²

2015

IIEEE Trans. Software Eng.

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Abstract-Knowledge management plays a central role in many software development organizations. While much of the important technical knowledge can be captured in documentation, there often exists a gap between the information needs of software developers and the documentation structure. To help developers navigate documentation, we developed a technique for automatically extracting tasks from software documentation by conceptualizing tasks as specific programming actions that have been described in the documentation. More than 70% of the tasks we extracted from the documentation of two projects were judged meaningful by at least one of two developers. We present TaskNavigator, a user interface for search queries that suggests tasks extracted with our technique in an auto-complete list along with concepts, code elements, and section headers. We conducted a field study in which six professional developers used TaskNavigator for two weeks as part of their ongoing work. We found search results identified through extracted tasks to be more helpful to developers than those found through concepts, code elements, and section headers. The results indicate that task descriptions can be effectively extracted from software documentation, and that they help bridge the gap between documentation structure and the information needs of software developers.

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Effective communication of software development knowledge through community portals

Cited by 28 publications

References 29 publications

The Social Side of Software Platform Ecosystems

The Social Side of Software Platform Ecosystems

Using and Asking: APIs Used in the Android Market and Asked about in StackOverflow

Extracting Development Tasks to Navigate Software Documentation

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