Software Developers' Work Habits and Expertise : Empirical Studies on Sketching, Code Plagiarism, and Expertise Development
Speaker (s): 
Sebastian Baltes
Lecturer,
School of Computer Science,
University of Adelaide, Australia | Date: Time: Venue: | | February 20, 2020, Thursday 4:30pm - 5:30pm SIS Meeting Room 5.1, Level 5,
School of Information Systems
Singapore Management University
80 Stamford Road
Singapore 178902 |
|
ABSTRACT
Analysing and understanding software developers' work habits and resulting needs is an essential prerequisite to improve software development practice. This talk outlines how we utilised different qualitative and quantitative research methods to empirically investigate three under-explored aspects of software development: First, we describe how software developers use sketches and diagrams in their daily work and derive requirements for better tool support. Then, we explore to what degree developers copy code from the popular online platform Stack Overflow without adhering to license requirements and motivate why this behaviour may lead to legal issues for affected open source software projects. Finally, we present a novel theory of software development expertise and identify factors fostering or hindering the formation of such expertise.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Sebastian Baltes is a Lecturer in the School of Computer Science at the University of Adelaide, Australia. He received his PhD degree in Computer Science from the University of Trier, Germany. In his research, he empirically analyses software developers' work habits to identify requirements for new tools and point to possible tool and process improvements. For him, thoroughly analysing and understanding the state-of-practice is an essential first step towards improving how software is being developed. Too often, decisions are still rather opinion-based than data-informed. His long-term goal is to bridge the gap between empirical research and practice, both by studying relevant phenomena and by communicating the results back to practitioners.
