ESEIW 2024
Sun 20 - Fri 25 October 2024 Barcelona, Spain

Non-trivial software systems are commonly developed using more than a single programming language, averaging 5 different languages according to recent studies. However, multi-language development is not straightforward. Developers need to be proficient in each language and also know the best integration practices between languages. Nowadays, tools powered by Large Language Models (LLMs), such as ChatGPT, have been shown to successfully assist practitioners in several aspects of software development. This paper reports a preliminary study aimed to investigate to what extent ChatGPT is being used in multi-language development scenarios. Hence, we leveraged DevGPT, a dataset of conversations between software practitioners and ChatGPT which also includes links to GitHub repositories from which the conversations originated. In total, we studied data from 3,584 conversations, comprising a total of 18,862 code snippets suggested by ChatGPT. Our analyses show that only 18.33% of the code snippets suggested by ChatGPT are written in the same programming language as the primary language in the repository where the conversation was shared. An in-depth analysis showcased interesting remarks. While we observed expected scenarios, such as 31.54% of JavaScript snippets being suggested in CSS repositories, we also unveiled surprising ones, such as Python snippets being largely suggested in C++ repositories. After a qualitative open card sorting of the conversations involving multiple languages, we found that in 70% of them developers were asking for coding support while in 57% developers used ChatGPT as a tool to generate code automatically. Our initial results indicate that not only are LLM-based tools being used in multi-language development but also showcase the most common contexts in which such tools are assisting developers.