research-article

Example-centric programming: integrating web search into the development environment

Authors:

Mira Dontcheva,

Marcos Weskamp,

Scott R. KlemmerAuthors Info & Claims

CHI '10: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

Pages 513 - 522

https://doi.org/10.1145/1753326.1753402

Published: 10 April 2010 Publication History

Abstract

The ready availability of online source-code examples has fundamentally changed programming practices. However, current search tools are not designed to assist with programming tasks and are wholly separate from editing tools. This paper proposes that embedding a task-specific search engine in the development environment can significantly reduce the cost of finding information and thus enable programmers to write better code more easily. This paper describes the design, implementation, and evaluation of Blueprint, a Web search interface integrated into the Adobe Flex Builder development environment that helps users locate example code. Blueprint automatically augments queries with code context, presents a code-centric view of search results, embeds the search experience into the editor, and retains a link between copied code and its source. A comparative laboratory study found that Blueprint enables participants to write significantly better code and find example code significantly faster than with a standard Web browser. Analysis of three months of usage logs with 2,024 users suggests that task-specific search interfaces can significantly change how and when people search the Web.

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Index Terms

Example-centric programming: integrating web search into the development environment
1. Human-centered computing
  1. Interaction design
    1. Interaction design process and methods
      1. Interface design prototyping

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Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

CHI '10: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

April 2010

2690 pages

ISBN:9781605589299

DOI:10.1145/1753326

General Chair:
Elizabeth Mynatt
Georgia Institute of Technology
,
Program Chairs:
Geraldine Fitzpatrick
Vienna University of Technology
,
Scott Hudson
Carnegie Mellon University
,
Keith Edwards
Georgia Tech
,
Tom Rodden
University of Nottingham

Copyright © 2010 ACM.

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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SIGCHI: ACM Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

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Published: 10 April 2010

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example-centric development

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CHI '10

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SIGCHI

CHI '10: CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

April 10 - 15, 2010

Georgia, Atlanta, USA

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Overall Acceptance Rate 6,199 of 26,314 submissions, 24%

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https://doi.org/10.3390/mti8040035
Aljeraisy ARana OPerera C(2024)Empowering IoT Developers with Privacy-Preserving End-User Development ToolsProceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies10.1145/36785888:3(1-47)Online publication date: 9-Sep-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3678588
Khurana AChilana PKostakos VKay JHoang T(2024)Understanding Novice Users' Mental Models of Gesture Discoverability and Designing Effective OnboardingCompanion of the 2024 on ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing10.1145/3675094.3678370(290-295)Online publication date: 5-Oct-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3675094.3678370
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