14 research outputs found
Senior Programmers: Characteristics of Elderly Users from Stack Overflow
In this paper we presents results of research about elderly users of Stack
Overflow (Question and Answer portal for programmers). They have different
roles, different main activities and different habits. They are an important
part of the community, as they tend to have higher reputation and they like to
share their knowledge. This is a great example of possible way of keeping
elderly people active and helpful for society
From Query to Usable Code: An Analysis of Stack Overflow Code Snippets
Enriched by natural language texts, Stack Overflow code snippets are an
invaluable code-centric knowledge base of small units of source code. Besides
being useful for software developers, these annotated snippets can potentially
serve as the basis for automated tools that provide working code solutions to
specific natural language queries.
With the goal of developing automated tools with the Stack Overflow snippets
and surrounding text, this paper investigates the following questions: (1) How
usable are the Stack Overflow code snippets? and (2) When using text search
engines for matching on the natural language questions and answers around the
snippets, what percentage of the top results contain usable code snippets?
A total of 3M code snippets are analyzed across four languages: C\#, Java,
JavaScript, and Python. Python and JavaScript proved to be the languages for
which the most code snippets are usable. Conversely, Java and C\# proved to be
the languages with the lowest usability rate. Further qualitative analysis on
usable Python snippets shows the characteristics of the answers that solve the
original question. Finally, we use Google search to investigate the alignment
of usability and the natural language annotations around code snippets, and
explore how to make snippets in Stack Overflow an adequate base for future
automatic program generation.Comment: 13th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Mining Software
Repositories, 11 page
An International Pilot Study of K-12 Teachers’Computer Science Self-Esteem
Computer Science (CS) is a new subject area for many K-12 teachersaround the world, requiring new disciplinary knowledge and skills.Teacher social-behavioral factors (e.g. self-esteem) have been foundto impact learning and teaching, and a key part of CS curriculumimplementation will need to ensure teachers feel confident to de-liver CS. However, studies about CS teacher self-esteem are lacking.This paper presents an analysis of publicly available data (n=219)from a pilot study using a Teacher CS Self-Esteem scale. Analy-sis revealed significant differences, including 1) females reportedsignificantly lower CS self-esteem than males, 2) primary teachersreported lower levels of CS self-esteem than secondary teachers, 3)those with no CS teaching experience reported significantly lowerCS self-esteem, 4) teachers with 0-3 years experience had a neg-ative CS self-esteem, but after four years, teachers had a positiveCS self-esteem, and 5) teachers who lived further from metropol-itan areas and in some countries reported lower CS self-esteem.These initial findings suggest a pressing need for future researchto look further into teacher CS self-esteem to inform teacher CSprofessional development
Towards a Theory of Software Development Expertise
Software development includes diverse tasks such as implementing new
features, analyzing requirements, and fixing bugs. Being an expert in those
tasks requires a certain set of skills, knowledge, and experience. Several
studies investigated individual aspects of software development expertise, but
what is missing is a comprehensive theory. We present a first conceptual theory
of software development expertise that is grounded in data from a mixed-methods
survey with 335 software developers and in literature on expertise and expert
performance. Our theory currently focuses on programming, but already provides
valuable insights for researchers, developers, and employers. The theory
describes important properties of software development expertise and which
factors foster or hinder its formation, including how developers' performance
may decline over time. Moreover, our quantitative results show that developers'
expertise self-assessments are context-dependent and that experience is not
necessarily related to expertise.Comment: 14 pages, 5 figures, 26th ACM Joint European Software Engineering
Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering (ESEC/FSE
2018), ACM, 201
Understanding the Connection Between Hackers and Their Hacks: Analyzing USDOJ Reports for Hacker Profiles
Recently, it seems as if hacking-related stories can be found in the news every day. To study, and hopefully prevent, this new type of crime, the field of cyber criminology has emerged. This study adds to the existing cybercrime literature by examining hacking behavior specifically. It determines if there is a relationship between the age, gender, and nationality of hackers and characteristics of the cyberattacks that they perpetrate. To do this, this study analyzes 122 United States Department of Justice (USDOJ) press reports from January 2019 to December 2021. Some key results include the finding that older hackers and international hackers are more likely to build/maintain software in their cyberattacks. Also, older hackers are less likely to use follow-up access in their hacks compared to younger hackers. Finally, international hackers are more likely to have more sophisticated attacks than nationals, and individual hackers are less likely to have sophisticated hacks than those working in groups. Implications of this study are that law enforcement can create a more accurate profile of hackers based on their hacks to guide them in investigations