Code search is an integral part of a developer’s workflow. In 2015, researchers published a paper reflecting on the code search practices of 27 developers. That paper had first-hand accounts for why those developers were using code search, and highlighted how often and in what situations developers were searching for code. In the past decade, much has changed in the landscape of developer support. New languages have emerged, AI for code generation has gained traction, auto-complete in the IDE has gotten better, Q&A forums have increased in popularity, and code repositories are larger than ever. It is worth considering whether those observations from almost a decade ago have stood the test of time.
In this work, we replicate and expand on the prior survey with over 1,200 developers, and report code search usage statistics for over 100,000 tool users. Unlike the prior work, in our surveys, we include explicit success criteria to understand when code search is meeting their needs, and when it is not. We dive further into two common sub-categories of code search effort: when developers are looking for examples, and when they are using code search alongside code review. We find that developers continue to use code search frequently, and the frequency has not changed despite the introduction of AI-enhanced development support. Developers continue to use code search to find examples, but the frequency of example-seeking behavior has decreased. More often than before, developers are using code search to learn about and explore code. This has implications for future code search support in software development.
Mon 23 JunDisplayed time zone: Amsterdam, Berlin, Bern, Rome, Stockholm, Vienna change
14:00 - 15:30 | Code SearchResearch Papers / Journal First / Ideas, Visions and Reflections at Aurora A Chair(s): Xin Xia Zhejiang University | ||
14:00 20mTalk | 10 years later: revisiting how developers search for code Research Papers Kathryn Stolee North Carolina State University, Tobias Welp Google, Caitlin Sadowski , Sebastian Elbaum University of Virginia DOI | ||
14:20 20mTalk | Approaching Code Search for Python as a Translation Retrieval Problem with Dual Encoders Journal First | ||
14:40 20mTalk | Zero-Shot Cross-Domain Code Search without Fine-Tuning Research Papers Keyu Liang Zhejiang University, Zhongxin Liu Zhejiang University, Chao Liu Chongqing University, Zhiyuan Wan Zhejiang University, David Lo Singapore Management University, Xiaohu Yang Zhejiang University DOI | ||
15:00 10mTalk | Measuring What Matters: An Aggregate Metric for Assessing Enterprise Code Summaries Ideas, Visions and Reflections Ashita Saxena IBM Research, Palanivel Kodeswaran IBM Research India, Sayandeep Sen IBM Research India, Srikanth Tamilselvam IBM Research | ||
15:10 20mTalk | MiSum: Multi-Modality Heterogeneous Code Graph Learning for Multi-Intent Binary Code Summarization Research Papers Kangchen Zhu National university of Defense Technology, Zhiliang Tian National University of Defense Technology, Shangwen Wang National University of Defense Technology, Weiguo Chen National University of Defense Technology, Zixuan Dong National University of Defense Technology, mingyue leng National University of Defense Technology, Xiaoguang Mao National University of Defense Technology DOI | ||
Aurora A is the first room in the Aurora wing.
When facing the main Cosmos Hall, access to the Aurora wing is on the right, close to the side entrance of the hotel.