What do developers search for on the web?

Developers commonly make use of a web search engine such as Google to locate online resources to improve their productivity. A better understanding of what developers search for could help us understand their behaviors and the problems that they meet during the software development process. Unfortun...

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Main Authors: XIA, Xin, BAO, Lingfeng, LO, David, KOCHHAR, Pavneet Singh, HASSAN, Ahmed E., XING, Zhenchang
Format: text
Language:English
Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2017
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Online Access:https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/sis_research/3798
https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/sis_research/article/4800/viewcontent/101007_2Fs10664_017_9514_4.pdf
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Institution: Singapore Management University
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spelling sg-smu-ink.sis_research-48002019-01-29T07:20:45Z What do developers search for on the web? XIA, Xin BAO, Lingfeng LO, David KOCHHAR, Pavneet Singh HASSAN, Ahmed E. XING, Zhenchang Developers commonly make use of a web search engine such as Google to locate online resources to improve their productivity. A better understanding of what developers search for could help us understand their behaviors and the problems that they meet during the software development process. Unfortunately, we have a limited understanding of what developers frequently search for and of the search tasks that they often find challenging. To address this gap, we collected search queries from 60 developers, surveyed 235 software engineers from more than 21 countries across five continents. In particular, we asked our survey participants to rate the frequency and difficulty of 34 search tasks which are grouped along the following seven dimensions: general search, debugging and bug fixing, programming, third party code reuse, tools, database, and testing. We find that searching for explanations for unknown terminologies, explanations for exceptions/error messages (e.g., HTTP 404), reusable code snippets, solutions to common programming bugs, and suitable third-party libraries/services are the most frequent search tasks that developers perform, while searching for solutions to performance bugs, solutions to multi-threading bugs, public datasets to test newly developed algorithms or systems, reusable code snippets, best industrial practices, database optimization solutions, solutions to security bugs, and solutions to software configuration bugs are the most difficult search tasks that developers consider. Our study sheds light as to why practitioners often perform some of these tasks and why they find some of them to be challenging. We also discuss the implications of our findings to future research in several research areas, e.g., code search engines, domain-specific search engines, and automated generation and refinement of search queries. 2017-12-01T08:00:00Z text application/pdf https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/sis_research/3798 info:doi/10.1007/s10664-017-9514-4 https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/sis_research/article/4800/viewcontent/101007_2Fs10664_017_9514_4.pdf http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems eng Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University Search task Understanding Empirical study Survey Programming Languages and Compilers Software Engineering
institution Singapore Management University
building SMU Libraries
continent Asia
country Singapore
Singapore
content_provider SMU Libraries
collection InK@SMU
language English
topic Search task
Understanding
Empirical study
Survey
Programming Languages and Compilers
Software Engineering
spellingShingle Search task
Understanding
Empirical study
Survey
Programming Languages and Compilers
Software Engineering
XIA, Xin
BAO, Lingfeng
LO, David
KOCHHAR, Pavneet Singh
HASSAN, Ahmed E.
XING, Zhenchang
What do developers search for on the web?
description Developers commonly make use of a web search engine such as Google to locate online resources to improve their productivity. A better understanding of what developers search for could help us understand their behaviors and the problems that they meet during the software development process. Unfortunately, we have a limited understanding of what developers frequently search for and of the search tasks that they often find challenging. To address this gap, we collected search queries from 60 developers, surveyed 235 software engineers from more than 21 countries across five continents. In particular, we asked our survey participants to rate the frequency and difficulty of 34 search tasks which are grouped along the following seven dimensions: general search, debugging and bug fixing, programming, third party code reuse, tools, database, and testing. We find that searching for explanations for unknown terminologies, explanations for exceptions/error messages (e.g., HTTP 404), reusable code snippets, solutions to common programming bugs, and suitable third-party libraries/services are the most frequent search tasks that developers perform, while searching for solutions to performance bugs, solutions to multi-threading bugs, public datasets to test newly developed algorithms or systems, reusable code snippets, best industrial practices, database optimization solutions, solutions to security bugs, and solutions to software configuration bugs are the most difficult search tasks that developers consider. Our study sheds light as to why practitioners often perform some of these tasks and why they find some of them to be challenging. We also discuss the implications of our findings to future research in several research areas, e.g., code search engines, domain-specific search engines, and automated generation and refinement of search queries.
format text
author XIA, Xin
BAO, Lingfeng
LO, David
KOCHHAR, Pavneet Singh
HASSAN, Ahmed E.
XING, Zhenchang
author_facet XIA, Xin
BAO, Lingfeng
LO, David
KOCHHAR, Pavneet Singh
HASSAN, Ahmed E.
XING, Zhenchang
author_sort XIA, Xin
title What do developers search for on the web?
title_short What do developers search for on the web?
title_full What do developers search for on the web?
title_fullStr What do developers search for on the web?
title_full_unstemmed What do developers search for on the web?
title_sort what do developers search for on the web?
publisher Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University
publishDate 2017
url https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/sis_research/3798
https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/sis_research/article/4800/viewcontent/101007_2Fs10664_017_9514_4.pdf
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