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What kinds of development problems can be solved by searching the web?: a field study

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SUITE '11: Proceedings of the 3rd International Workshop on Search-Driven Development: Users, Infrastructure, Tools, and Evaluation

Pages 41 - 44

https://doi.org/10.1145/1985429.1985440

Published: 28 May 2011 Publication History

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Abstract

Developers use the Web as a tool to find information to help them solve their software development problems. However, little is known about what kinds of problems motivate developers to do searches on the Web. We asked twenty-five developers to record their Web searches at a medium-sized software company. We also observed twelve developers. In our analysis, we found that there are six main kinds of problems. One, developers want to find procedural information, such as quick references about how to solve some programming problems. Two, developers use the Web as a memory aid to remember details about how to solve a problem they solved before. Three, developers want to solve a knowledge problem, for example, learning some new concepts. Four, developers want to find information to understand and solve errors. Five, developers need information to judge the suitability of software components being evaluated. Finally, in the "Other" category, we included problems such as searching for software to download or translating functions.

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Tayeb AAlahmadi MTajik EHaiduc S(2024)Investigating Developers' Preferences for Learning and Issue Resolution Resources in the ChatGPT Era2024 IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution (ICSME)10.1109/ICSME58944.2024.00045(413-425)Online publication date: 6-Oct-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/ICSME58944.2024.00045
Alghamdi OClinch SAlhamadi MJay C(2023)Novice Programmers Strategies for Online Resource Use and Their Impact on Source Code2023 IEEE/ACM 16th International Conference on Cooperative and Human Aspects of Software Engineering (CHASE)10.1109/CHASE58964.2023.00018(92-104)Online publication date: May-2023
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Arya DRoychoudhury ACadar CKim M(2022)This is your cue! assisting search behaviour with resource style propertiesProceedings of the 30th ACM Joint European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering10.1145/3540250.3558909(1770-1774)Online publication date: 7-Nov-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3540250.3558909
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Index Terms

What kinds of development problems can be solved by searching the web?: a field study
1. Information systems
  1. Information retrieval
  2. Information storage systems
2. Software and its engineering

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Published In

SUITE '11: Proceedings of the 3rd International Workshop on Search-Driven Development: Users, Infrastructure, Tools, and Evaluation

May 2011

52 pages

ISBN:9781450305976

DOI:10.1145/1985429

Program Chairs:
Sushil Bajracharya
Black Duck Software, USA
,
Adrian Kuhn
University of Bern, Switzerland
,
Yunen Ye
Software Research Associates, Inc., Japan

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Published: 28 May 2011

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ICSE11: International Conference on Software Engineering

May 28, 2011

HI, Waikiki, Honolulu, USA

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Tayeb AAlahmadi MTajik EHaiduc S(2024)Investigating Developers' Preferences for Learning and Issue Resolution Resources in the ChatGPT Era2024 IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution (ICSME)10.1109/ICSME58944.2024.00045(413-425)Online publication date: 6-Oct-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/ICSME58944.2024.00045
Alghamdi OClinch SAlhamadi MJay C(2023)Novice Programmers Strategies for Online Resource Use and Their Impact on Source Code2023 IEEE/ACM 16th International Conference on Cooperative and Human Aspects of Software Engineering (CHASE)10.1109/CHASE58964.2023.00018(92-104)Online publication date: May-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/CHASE58964.2023.00018
Arya DRoychoudhury ACadar CKim M(2022)This is your cue! assisting search behaviour with resource style propertiesProceedings of the 30th ACM Joint European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering10.1145/3540250.3558909(1770-1774)Online publication date: 7-Nov-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3540250.3558909
Arya DGuo JRobillard M(2022)How programmers find online learning resourcesEmpirical Software Engineering10.1007/s10664-022-10246-y28:2Online publication date: 24-Dec-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s10664-022-10246-y
Escobar-Avila JVenuti DDi Penta MHaiduc SBeecham SDamian D(2019)A survey on online learning preferences for computer science and programmingProceedings of the 41st International Conference on Software Engineering: Software Engineering Education and Training10.1109/ICSE-SEET.2019.00026(170-181)Online publication date: 27-May-2019
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Martie LHoek AKwak TBodden ESchäfer WDeursen AZisman A(2017)Understanding the impact of support for iteration on code searchProceedings of the 2017 11th Joint Meeting on Foundations of Software Engineering10.1145/3106237.3106293(774-785)Online publication date: 21-Aug-2017
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Martie Lvan der Hoek APenta MPinzger MRobbes R(2015)SamenessProceedings of the 12th Working Conference on Mining Software Repositories10.5555/2820518.2820530(76-87)Online publication date: 16-May-2015
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Martie Lvan der Hoek A(2015)Sameness: An Experiment in Code Search2015 IEEE/ACM 12th Working Conference on Mining Software Repositories10.1109/MSR.2015.15(76-87)Online publication date: May-2015
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Martie LLaToza Tvan der Hoek ACohen MGrunske LWhalen M(2015)CodeExchangeProceedings of the 30th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering10.1109/ASE.2015.51(24-35)Online publication date: 9-Nov-2015
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Wang LZou YFang LXie BYang F(2012)An Exploratory Study of API Usage Examples on the WebProceedings of the 2012 19th Asia-Pacific Software Engineering Conference - Volume 0110.1109/APSEC.2012.122(396-405)Online publication date: 4-Dec-2012
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Software Development Cultures and Cooperation Problems: A Field Study of the Early Stages of Development of Software for a Scientific Community

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