Veteran developers' contributions and motivations: An open source perspective

Morrison, Patrick; Pandita, Rahul; Murphy-Hill, Emerson; McLaughlin, Anne Collins

doi:10.1109/vlhcc.2016.7739681

Cited by 13 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 34 publications

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“…Finally, we plan to follow previous studies [34], [46] and work with veteran developers to identify optimal strategies to preserve their knowledge and investigate how to remove entrylevel barriers by efficiently passing hard-earned expertise onto a new generation of developers. With one of the participants reporting 60 years of programming experience, we deem this research direction to be particularly exciting and viable in the context of COBOL.…”

Section: Discussion and Future Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Contemporary COBOL: Developers' perspectives on Defects and Defect Location

Ciborowska¹,

Chakarov²,

Pandita³

2021

Preprint

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Mainframe systems are facing a critical shortage of developer workforce as the current generation of COBOL developers retires. Furthermore, due to the limited availability of public COBOL resources, entry-level developers, who assume the mantle of legacy COBOL systems maintainers, face significant difficulties during routine maintenance tasks, such as code comprehension and defect location. While we made substantial advances in the field of software maintenance for modern programming languages yearly, mainframe maintenance has received limited attention. With this study, we aim to direct the attention of researchers and practitioners towards investigating and addressing challenges associated with mainframe development. Specifically, we explore the scope of defects affecting COBOL systems and defect location strategies commonly followed by COBOL developers and compare them with the modern programming language counterparts. To this end, we surveyed 30 COBOL and 74 modern Programming Language (PL) developers to understand the differences in defects and defect location strategies employed by the two groups. Our preliminary results show that (1) major defect categories affecting the COBOL ecosystem are different than defects encountered in modern PL software projects; (2) the most challenging defect types in COBOL are also the ones that occur most frequently; and, (3) COBOL and modern PL developers follow similar strategies to locate defective code.

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Section: Discussion and Future Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Contemporary COBOL: Developers' perspectives on Defects and Defect Location

Ciborowska¹,

Chakarov²,

Pandita³

2021

Preprint

Self Cite

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“…Research has investigated the experience of "older" contributors in OSS [13,49,50]. For instance, Murakami et al [50] looked at how age can impact code reviews and found that age has no significant effect on code review correctness and efficiency.…”

Section: Background and Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For instance, Murakami et al [50] looked at how age can impact code reviews and found that age has no significant effect on code review correctness and efficiency. Morrison et al [49] investigated the low participation of veteran software developers in OSS and how their contributions differ from those of their younger peers. Morrison et al [49] results reflected that veteran OSS contributors are less socially motivated than their younger counterparts, which aligns with Davidson et al [13] findings that older contributors face more social than technical challenges.…”

Section: Background and Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For example, studies have investigated the effects of location and language on getting contributions accepted [24,62,63]. Others have analyzed age diversity by analyzing its impact on code reviews [50], or motivations to continue to contribute [13,49]. The majority of research has focused on only one attribute of diversity, with a few emerging works extending the gender diversity analysis by incorporating another diversity attribute (e.g., location [53,57], cognitive style [54]).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Perceptions of the State of D&I and D&I Initiative in the ASF

Guizani,

Trinkenreich,

Castro-Guzman

et al. 2022

Preprint

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Open Source Software (OSS) Foundations and projects are investing in creating Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) initiatives. However, little is known about contributors' perceptions about the usefulness and success of such initiatives. We aim to close this gap by investigating how contributors perceive the state of D&I in their community. In collaboration with the Apache Software Foundation (ASF), we surveyed 600+ OSS contributors and conducted 11 follow-up interviews. We used mixed methods to analyze our data-quantitative analysis of Likert-scale questions and qualitative analysis of openended survey question and the interviews to understand contributors' perceptions and critiques of the D&I initiative and how to improve it. Our results indicate that the ASF contributors felt that the state of D&I was still lacking, especially regarding gender, seniority, and English proficiency. Regarding the D&I initiative, some participants felt that the effort was unnecessary, while others agreed with the effort but critiqued its implementation. These findings show that D&I initiatives in OSS communities are a good start, but there is room for improvements. Our results can inspire the creation of new and the refinement of current initiatives.

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“…The perception that younger software engineers are better is pervasive throughout the industry and even popular media [4]. This discriminatory discourse tend to create challenges to older software engineers to participate in open-source software (OSS) projects [5,42].…”

Section: Relevant Work 31 Understanding Diversity In Cs/sementioning

confidence: 99%

Towards Understanding Barriers and Mitigation Strategies of Software Engineers with Non-traditional Educational and Occupational Backgrounds

Barnes¹,

Lee²,

Tavares³

et al. 2022

Preprint

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The traditional path to a software engineering career involves a post-secondary diploma in Software Engineering, Computer Science, or a related field. However, many software engineers take a non-traditional path to their career, starting from other industries or fields of study. This paper proposes a study on barriers faced by software engineers with non-traditional educational and occupational backgrounds, and possible mitigation strategies for those barriers. We propose a two-stage methodology, consisting of an exploratory study, followed by a validation study. The exploratory study will involve a grounded-theory-based qualitative analysis of relevant Reddit data to yield a framework around the barriers and possible mitigation strategies. These findings will then be validated using a survey in the validation study. Making software engineering more accessible to those with non-traditional backgrounds will not only bring about the benefits of functional diversity, but also serves as a method of filling in the labour shortages of the software engineering industry. CCS CONCEPTS• Social and professional topics → Computing profession.

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Veteran developers' contributions and motivations: An open source perspective

Cited by 13 publications

References 34 publications

Contemporary COBOL: Developers' perspectives on Defects and Defect Location

Contemporary COBOL: Developers' perspectives on Defects and Defect Location

Perceptions of the State of D&I and D&I Initiative in the ASF

Towards Understanding Barriers and Mitigation Strategies of Software Engineers with Non-traditional Educational and Occupational Backgrounds

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