Towards a theory of software development expertise

Abstract

Software development includes diverse tasks such as implementing new features, analyzing requirements, and fixing bugs. Being an expert in those tasks requires a certain set of skills, knowledge, and experience. Several studies investigated individual aspects of software development expertise, but what is missing is a comprehensive theory. We present a first conceptual theory of software development expertise that is grounded in data from a mixed-methods survey with 335 software developers and in literature on expertise and expert performance. Our theory currently focuses on programming, but already provides valuable insights for researchers, developers, and employers. The theory describes important properties of software development expertise and which factors foster or hinder its formation, including how developers' performance may decline over time. Moreover, our quantitative results show that developers' expertise self-assessments are context-dependent and that experience is not necessarily related to expertise. CCS CONCEPTS• Software and its engineering;

Enabling Good Work Habits in Software Developers through Reflective Goal-Setting

“…A related area of research looked into characteristics and work habits of successful developers, some of which developers might consider relevant and important to pursue as goals. Amongst other characteristics, successful developers often share similar attributes, such as striving for productivity and efficiency, being self-aware, asking for and offering help and feedback, constantly learning and self-improving, doing data-driven decisions, and setting challenging goals [1], [2], [14], [35], [49], [50]. Successful developers also manage to find a good balance between focused work and helping or mentoring others [2], [14].…”

“…time, size, quality, schedule data), to better understand and improve their performance, quality, time estimations and skills [38]. Baltes et al recently found that many developers already selfmonitor their work, by using tools such as RescueTime [61], Codealike [71] or Wakatime [72], but only very few actively and regularly reflect on work (3 out of 204 survey participants) [14]. This is why we were interested in learning how open developers are towards actively self-reflecting on their work on a daily basis during several weeks.…”

“…[6], [10], [11], [12], [13]). Recently, researchers have also looked into the attributes and habits of great software developers [1], [2], [14]. They found that one key trait of successful developers is growth orientation, which means that they are constantly learning and striving to change their behavior to increase efficiency at work.…”

“…This is why we wanted to study the goals that developers set for themselves to improve and maintain good habits at work, the strategies they pursue to achieve those goals, and the impact their goal-setting has on productivity and well-being. Even though self-reflection has previously been shown to have great potential to foster goal-identification, developers rarely reflect on or review their work in practice [14]. Hence, we further aimed to examine whether encouraging developers to self-reflect continuously on work, results in meaningful insights about work and leads to any work habit goals and -improvements.…”

Identifying Experts in Software Libraries and Frameworks Among GitHub Users

“…Altogether, this triangulation with Linkedin shows that the proposed clustering-based method was able in most cases to find several GitHub developers with evidences of having experience on the studied libraries. However, before concluding, it is also important to acknowledge that expertise and experience are distinct concepts; indeed, experience is normally viewed as a necessary condition to achieve expertise [44], [45].…”