Sri Lakshmi Vadlamani | ICSME 2020 Talk
Channel: SWAN Research Group
Date: 2022-04-19

"Studying Software Developer Expertise and Contributions in Stack Overflow and GitHub" by Sri Lakshmi Vadlamani and Olga Baysal.

Abstract—Knowledge  and  experience  are  touted  as  both  the necessary  and  sufficient  conditions  to  make  a  person  an  expert. This  paper  attempts  to  investigate  this  issue  in  the  context  of software development by studying software developer’s expertise based  on  their  activity  and  experience  on  GitHub  and  Stack Overflow platforms. We study how developers themselves define the notion of an “expert”, as well as why or why not developers contribute  to  online  collaborative  platforms.  We  conducted  an exploratory  survey  with  73  software  developers  and  applied  a mixed  methods  approach  to  analyze  the  survey  results.  The results   provided   deeper   insights   into   how   an   expert   in   the field  could  be  defined.  Further,  the  study  provides  a  better understanding  of  the  underlying  factors  that  drive  developers to contribute to GitHub and Stack Overflow, and the challenges they  face  when  participating  on  either  platform.The  quantitative  analysis  showed  that  JavaScript  remains  a popular  language,  while  knowledge  and  experience  are  the  key factors driving expertise. On the other hand, qualitative analysis showed that soft skills such as effective and clear communication,analytical thinking are key factors defining an expert. We found that  both  knowledge  and  experience  are  only  necessary  but  not sufficient  conditions  for  a  developer  to  become  an  expert,  and an expert would necessarily have to possess adequate soft skills. Lastly,  an  expert’s  contribution  to  GitHub  seems  to  be  driven by  personal  factors,  while  contribution  to  Stack  Overflow  is motivated more by professional drivers (i.e., skills and expertise). Moreover,  developers  seem  to  prefer  contributing  to  GitHub  as they face greater challenges while contributing to Stack Overflow.


Bio: Sri Lakshmi Vadlamani is a Master's Student at the Software Analytics Research Group (SWAN), School of Computer Science, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada.