Abstract
Developers use the Web as a tool to find information to help them solve their software development problems. However, little was known about what kinds of problems motivate developers to do searches on the Web. We observed 24 developers at 3 software companies. In our analysis, we found that there are four main kinds of problems. When “Remembering,” developers knew exactly what they are looking for and only wanted to remember syntax details or find facts. When they needed “Clarification,” developers had a high-level understanding of what they want to implement, but did not know precisely how to do it. During “Learning,” developers wanted to acquire new concepts. Finally, the last kind of problem was a need for a tool or open source project/component. The first three kinds of search can be characterized as using an opportunistic process, whereas the fourth kind uses a non-opportunistic process. Our findings complement prior research on search targets during source code search and have implications for tool support.
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Notes
- 1.
Some definitions of sessions used by other researches indicate that Web usage must be continuous with no breaks longer than 5 min [11], 6 min [3], or 25.5 min [4]. However, we decided not to include a cutoff in the longest time a break could take in the same day. Our decision was based on the fact that we observed that developers had interruptions longer than 25.5 min while using the Web and when they came back they continued reviewing information on the Web or refining queries to fill the same information need. For that reason, the only time constraint we consider is that Web usage should happen the same day. Instead, we put more emphasis to the intention of the search. If Web usage was done to meet the same information need, we consider all those intervals as part of the same Search Session. The three longest breaks that we observed in our field sites were of 3 h 25 min 46 s, 1 h 34 min 19 s, and 1 h 16 min and 18 s. In these cases, developers interrupted their search to chat with co-workers, answer calls from customers, code, write documentation, and have personal breaks. When they used the Web again, they read the information they found before and in some cases they also copied and pasted lines of source code and used them even though more than 3 h passed since their first query.
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Acknowledgements
Thank you to all the participants and supporters at Novatronic, “Health Connection,” and AppFolio. This research was possible due to their generosity in sharing their time and work with us. This material is based upon work supported by the NSF under Grant No. IIS-0846034. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessary reflect the views of the NSF.
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Gallardo-Valencia, R.E., Sim, S.E. (2013). Software Problems That Motivate Web Searches. In: Sim, S.E., Gallardo-Valencia, R.E. (eds) Finding Source Code on the Web for Remix and Reuse. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6596-6_13
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