Margaret-Anne (Peggy) StoreyKeynote for BENEVOL 2012, TU Delft, the Netherlands

The Social Software (R)evolution:Impact of Social Media on Software Evolution

CHISEL group, UVic, Canada: – Brendan Cleary– Christoph Treude– Fernando Figueira Filho– Jamie Starke– Gargi Bougie– Peter Rigby– Lars Grammel

Arie van Deursen, TU Delft, the Netherlands Chris Parnin, Georgia Tech, USA Leif Singer, Leibniz Universität, GermanyOhad Barzilay, Tel-Aviv University, Israel Daniel German, UVic, Canada

Research interests

Human and social aspects in software and knowledge engineering

Goal: develop theories to inform or suggest tool design

Impact of social media on software engineering

M.-A. Storey, C. Treude, A. van Deursen and L.-T. Cheng. The Impact of Social Media on Software Engineering Practices and Tools. In FoSER ’10: Proceedings of the FSE/SDP workshop on Future of software engineering research.

PlaceSpace

P. Dourish and V. Bellotti. Awareness and Coordination in Shared Workspaces. Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW'92).

“Architecture of participation” Tim O’Reilly

Roadmap

How social media impacts software engineering

How social media impacts today’s software evolution challenges

Future research directions for software evolution

M.-A. Storey. Keynote for MSR 2012. The Evolution of the Social Programmer: Social Media and Software Engineering. On slideshare.

Social Media Channels in Software Engineering

Wikis, social networking, etc.

Tagging

MicrobloggingQuestion &

Answer Websites

Reputation

Blogging

Social Coding

Wikis, social networking, etc.

Question & Answer Websites

Reputation Tagging

Social Coding

MicroBlogging

Blogging

Social TaggingInspired by how social tagging is used on the web(and by inadequacies with source code comments)

TagSEA: Social bookmarks (tagging) to create “waypoints” through software

M.-A. Storey, J. Ryall, J. Singer, D. Myers, L.-T. Cheng, M. Muller, 2009. How Software Developers Use Tagging to Support Reminding and Refinding. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering (TSE), 2009.

Tagging in

Findings: – Categorization (cross cutting concerns)– Organization– Finding and refinding– Team work practices emerged

C. Treude and M.-A. Storey. Work Item Tagging: Communicating Concerns in Collaborative Software Development. In IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering 38, 1 (January/February 2012). pp. 19-34.

Studied introduction and adoption of tags by several teams for work items

Wikis, social networking, etc.

Question & Answer Websites

Reputation Tagging

Social Coding

MicroBlogging

Blogging

MicrobloggingWhy do developers tweet?

Microblogging

Software engineers tweet (share) facts about software engineering topics and technology

G. Bougie, J. Starke, M.-A. Storey and D. German. Towards Understanding Twitter Use in Software Engineering: Preliminary Findings Ongoing Challenges and Future Questions 2nd International Workshop on Web 2.0 for Software Engineering. 2011.

A. Guzzi, M. Pinzger, A. van Deursen. Combining micro-blogging and IDE interactions to support developers in their quests. ICSM 2010.

Should microblogging be integrated in the IDE for the enterprise?

Wikis, social networking, etc.

Question & Answer Websites

Reputation Tagging

Social Coding

MicroBlogging

Blogging

BloggingWhy do developers blog?

Blogging

Determining requirements through blogs [Park and Maurer, CHASE 2009]

How developers blog: domain concepts and functional requirements (linked to commits)

[Pagano and Maalej, MSR 2011]

Blogs play a role in documenting APIs [Treude and Parnin, Web2SE 2011]

Wikis, social networking, etc.

Question & Answer Websites

Reputation Tagging

Social Coding

MicroBlogging

Blogging

Question and Answer Websites

What role do Question and Answer websites play in software engineering?

Stackoverflow

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Millions'

Stack'Overflow'Website'Traffic'

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Stack'Overflow'Ques=ons''Per'Month' 3.1M'

Ques=ons'6.2M'Answers'

12M'Comments'

3.5k'Views'per'minute'

1.5M'PersonJhours''(es=mate'of'10'min'per'post)'

274th'USA'website'ranking'(Quantcast'Jan'2012)'

Over 92% of the questions on Stackoverflow are answered, and for those 92% the median answer time is 11 minutes

L. Mamykina, B. Manoim, M. Mittal, G. Hripcsak, and B. Hartmann. Design lessons from the fastest q&a site in the west. CHI 2011.

Stackoverflow

How-to questions prevalent, and used frequently by novices

C. Treude, O. Barzilay and M.-A. Storey. How do Programmers Ask and Answer Questions on the Web? NIER/ICSE 2011.

Crowd documentation (API documentation)

C. Parnin, C. Treude, L. Grammel and M.-A. Storey. Crowd Documentation: Exploring the Coverage and the Dynamics of API Discussions on Stack Overflow”. Under submission.

Wikis, social networking, etc.

Question & Answer Websites

Reputation

Tagging

Social Coding

MicroBlogging

Blogging

ReputationWhy do developers and recruiters use reputation features in

social networking sites?

Social Coding in GitHubManagement of profiles and their visibility important for project successExplicit self promotion not valued

L. Dabbish, H.C. Stuart, J. Tsay and J. Herbsleb. Social coding in github: transparency and collaboration in an open software repository. CSCW 2012.

Masterbranch and Coderwall

L. Singer, F. F. Filho, B. Cleary, C. Treude, M.-A. Storey, K. Schneider. Mutual Assessment in the Social Programmer Ecosystem: An Empirical Investigation of Developer Profile Aggregators To appear CSCW 2013. Blog: http://to.leif.me/devprofiles

Mutual Assessment in the Software Ecosystem

Wikis, social networking, etc.

Tagging

MicroBloggingQuestion &

Answer Websites

Reputation

Blogging

Social Coding

Social CodingHow do social coding sites support collaborative processes in

software engineering and improve project quality?

Social Coding in GitHubGitHub supports transparencyTransparency may promote good testing practices; infrastructure for drive-by commitsValuable resource for research

L. Dabbish, H.C. Stuart, J. Tsay and J. Herbsleb. Social coding in github: transparency and collaboration in an open software repository. CSCW 2012.

R. Pham, L. Singer, O. Liskin, F. Figueira Filho, K. Schneider. On Testing Culture in GitHub Projects, To Appear ICSE 2012.

G. Gousios and D. Spinellis, GHTorrent: Github's data from a firehose, MSR 2012.

Wikis, social networking, etc.

Question & Answer Websites

Reputation

CommunityPortals

Tagging

Social Coding

MicroBlogging/Blogging

Wikis etc...

• Wikis useful for documentation, requirements engineering, knowledge sharing

• Impact of social networking in software engineering (Codebook) - can also follow software artifacts

• Crowdsourcing of coding (TopCoder) and testing (e.g. Google’s A/B testing approach)

• Community portals in software communities• Facilitates end-user involvement in closed, open source

and mixed initiative projects

Marshall McLuhan

It is the framework which changes with each new

technology and not just the picture within the frame. 1955

The medium is the message. 1958

We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us. Laws of Media by Marshall McLuhan

Medium

Making sense of the social media ecosystem (the social era) in software engineering

Wikis, social networking, etc.

Tagging

MicrobloggingQuestion & Answer Websites

Reputation

Blogging

Social Coding

Social Media

Crowdsourcing of content and peer curation of knowledge

EnhancesTask management, coordination

Awareness, transparency

Learning

Personal portfolio development, expertise finding, recruitment

Social Media

Retrieves??

Programmer “rock stars”Oral culture (talkbacks on blogs)End-user programmersPortfolios

“On Twitter, I follow a few prominent software developers. For example, Kelly Sommers from Canada, she’s constantly trying new things. I don’t think she ever sleeps. So she’s a great source of inspiration.” (From the Reputation study)

Social Media

Reverses??

Geek cultureReliance on searchInterruptionsSecurity holesSpaghetti code

“Google as the most important member on your programming team”, Brendan Cleary

Social Media

Obsolesces??

Formal documentationIn-house expertise, certain jobsNeed for co-locationClassroom educationEmail listsCVs

"It's always good to document a widget, but it's more important in many cases to document a process [...]. It's the context of how you use the widget that's much more important."

(Distributed) Community formation, awareness, transparency, knowledge curation,learning, reuse, reputation

Community fragmentation,informal processes,

geek culture, reliance on search,security concerns,

interruptions, advertisements

Programming gurus,end users as developers,verbal discussions, portfolios,communities of practice

In-house expertise/jobs, formal documentation,

classroom education, CVs, email lists,

need for co-location

Social Media

Wikis,

Tagging

MicroblogQ&A

Reputation

Blogging

Social Coding

Shift from the technology of social software to what it and a culture of participation enables...

Peer production

Beyond source code!Crowd documentationDeveloper profiles and portfoliosTechnology diffusionLearning materials

Motivations: personal and socialInnovation friendly!

Not just code writing abilityAbility to searchAbility to networkAbility to document/publish to facilitate searchKnowledgeAble rather than Knowledgeable

The evolution of the social programmer

http://www.academiccommons.org/commons/essay/knowledgable-knowledge-able, by Michael Wesch

Evolution of software engineering process?

Peer productionSocial programmer

Software ecosystemsSocial networks and communities of practice

Cambrian explosion of technologies User empowerment

Semantics and quantificationSocial development process

Social Programmer Ecosystem

Software Evolution

Laws of software evolution

Software that remains useful over time, willcontinually change…become more complexincrease in sizedecrease in quality…

Manny Lehman, 1925-2010

Fred Brooks

No silver bullet... Accidental versus essential complexity!

Essential complexitiesComplexity of softwareConformability (real world is complex)Changeability (success drives change)Invisibility (dynamic aspects)

"there  is  no  single  development,  in  either  technology  or  management  technique,  which  by  itself  promises  even  one  order  of  magnitude  [tenfold]  improvement  within  a  decade  in  productivity,  in  reliability,  in  simplicity.“    Fred  Brooks,  1986

Software development as a human activity

Mythical man month, Brooks’ Law Many good designers, but only so many “great” designersProposes a hierarchical structure with documentation for communication

Evolution challenges (human-centric)

Requirements change, understanding

Developer knowledgeTeam work (which process is best?)

Documentation, knowledge managementTesting, quality control

Research on software evolution

Knowledge ProgramsTechnologiesDevelopersTeamsUsersToolsProcesses

Yesterday’s software evolution world....

Today’s software evolution world....

Knowledge ProgramsTechnologiesDevelopersTeamsUsersToolsProcesses

BUT: Are we doing any better?Are developers more productive, successful, creative today? Is social software closing gap between good and great designers?

Is quality and variety of software and documentation improving?

Are today’s users more satisfied? Is today’s software helping users become more productive (paradox of computing)?

Something to chew on...

Was the problem of building an encyclopedia of knowledge an essential complexity or an accidental one?

Research opportunities and challenges

Great resources out there to support research of evolution! But software development landscape changing rapidly, can research keep up?

Are the laws/theories of evolution outdated?

Is the social development ecosystem addressing “essential” complexities or just accidental ones?What risks are we facing? (IP, company assets, programmer time, ...)

Concluding remark

“If we understand the revolutionary transformations caused by new media, we can anticipate and control them; but if we continue in our self-induced subliminal trance, we will be their slaves.” Marshall McLuhan, 1974

If code is a form of communication, is the way we write software (process, culture and tools) a new medium?

IEEE Software special issueBridging Software Communities through Social Networking, January/February 2013

http://www.thechiselgroup.orghttp://margaretannestorey.wordpress.com/

@thechiselgroup, @margaretstoreymstorey@uvic.ca

Funded by NSERC/DRDC/IBM