Unveiling Ruby: Insights from Stack Overflow and Developer Survey
Ruby is a widely used open-source programming language, valued for its simplicity, especially in web development. Despite its popularity, with over one million users on GitHub, little is known about the issues faced by Ruby developers. This study aims to investigate the key topics, trends, and difficulties faced by Ruby developers by analyzing over 498,000 Ruby-related questions on Stack Overflow (SO), followed by a survey of 154 Ruby developers.
We employed BERTopic modeling and manual analysis to develop a taxonomy of 35 topics, grouped into six main categories. Our findings reveal that Web Application Development is the most commonly discussed category, while Ruby Gem Installation and Configuration Issues emerged as the most challenging topic. Analysis of trends on SO showed a steady decline.
A survey of 154 Ruby developers demonstrated that 31.6% of the participants find the Core Ruby Concepts category particularly difficult, while Application Quality and Security is found to be difficult for over 40% of experienced developers. Notably, a comparison between survey responses and SO metrics highlights a misalignment, suggesting that perceived difficulty and objective indicators from SO differ — emphasizing the need for improved metrics to capture developer challenges better.
Our study provides insights about the challenges Ruby developers face and strong implications for researchers.
Wed 18 JunDisplayed time zone: Athens change
15:30 - 17:00 | Human Factors in Software EngineeringResearch Papers / Industry Papers / Learnings/Reflections of Evaluation and Assessment projects in Software Engineering at Glass Room Chair(s): Eray Tüzün Bilkent University | ||
15:30 10mTalk | Organizing for Product Development: A Framework for Structuring Agile Organizations Industry Papers Nils Brede Moe Sintef, Darja Šmite Blekinge Institute of Technology, Jostein Emmerhoff Vend, Marcin Floryan Independent | ||
15:40 15mTalk | Reflection on Code Contributor Demographics and Collaboration Patterns in the Rust Community Research Papers Rohit Dandamudi University of British Columbia, Kelowna, Ifeoma Adaji University of British Columbia, Kelowna, Gema Rodríguez-Pérez Department of Computer Science, Mathematics, Physics and Statistics, University of British Columbia, Okanagan Campus Pre-print | ||
15:55 15mTalk | Understanding and Influencing End-User Behavior in Software Energy Consumption Research Papers Thomas Zaragoza Université de Pau et des Pays de l’Adour, Thibault Soulance Université de Pau et des Pays de l'Adour, Adel Noureddine University of Pau and Pays de l'Adour, Ernesto Exposito Universite de Pau et des Pays de l’Adour, E2S UPPA, LIUPPA | ||
16:10 15mPaper | Understanding Underrepresented Groups in Open Source Software Learnings/Reflections of Evaluation and Assessment projects in Software Engineering Reydne Bruno dos Santos UFPE, Rafa Prado Federal University of Pernambuco, Ana Paula de Holanda Silva Federal University of Pernambuco, Kiev Gama Universidade Federal de Pernambuco, Fernando Castor University of Twente, Ronnie de Souza Santos University of Calgary Pre-print | ||
16:25 15mTalk | Unveiling Ruby: Insights from Stack Overflow and Developer Survey Research Papers Nikta Akbarpour Department of Computer Science, Mathematics, Physics and Statistics, University of British Columbia, Okanagan Campus, Ahmad Saleem Mirza Department of Computer Science, Mathematics, Physics and Statistics, University of British Columbia, Okanagan Campus, Erfan Raoofian Department of Computer Science, Mathematics, Physics and Statistics, University of British Columbia, Okanagan Campus, Fatemeh Hendijani Fard Department of Computer Science, Mathematics, Physics and Statistics, University of British Columbia, Okanagan Campus, Gema Rodríguez-Pérez Department of Computer Science, Mathematics, Physics and Statistics, University of British Columbia, Okanagan Campus Pre-print | ||