ICSE 2024
Fri 12 - Sun 21 April 2024 Lisbon, Portugal

A big part of software developers’ time is spent finding answers to their coding task-related questions. To answer their questions, developers usually perform web searches, ask questions on Q&A websites, or, more recently, also in chat communities. Yet, many of these questions have frequently already been answered in previous chat conversations or other online communities. Automatically identifying and then suggesting these previous answers to the askers could, thus, save time and effort. In an empirical analysis, we first explored the frequency of repeating questions on the Discord chat platform and assessed our approach to identify them automatically. The approach was then evaluated with real-world developers in a field experiment, through which we received 142 ratings on the helpfulness of the suggestions we provided to help answer 277 questions that developers posted in 4 Discord communities. We further collected qualitative feedback through 53 surveys and 10 follow-up interviews. We found that the suggestions were considered helpful in 40% of the cases, that suggesting Stack Overflow posts is more often considered helpful than past Discord conversations, and that developers have difficulties describing their problem as search queries and, thus, prefer describing them as natural language questions in online communities.

Fri 19 Apr

Displayed time zone: Lisbon change

11:00 - 12:30
Human and Social Aspects, and Requirements 2Research Track / Software Engineering in Society at Maria Helena Vieira da Silva
Chair(s): Silvia Abrahão Universitat Politècnica de València
11:00
15m
Talk
Novelty Begets Popularity, But Curbs Participation - A Macroscopic View of the Python Open-Source Ecosystem
Research Track
Hongbo Fang Carnegie Mellon University, Jim Herbsleb Carnegie Mellon University, Bogdan Vasilescu Carnegie Mellon University
Pre-print
11:15
15m
Talk
Characterizing Software Maintenance Meetings: Information Shared, Discussion Outcomes, and Information Captured
Research Track
Adriana Meza Soria MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab, Taylor Lopez University of California, Irvine, Liz Seero Colorado College, Negin Mashhadi University of California, Irvine, Emily Evans Colorado College, Janet Burge Colorado College, André van der Hoek University of California, Irvine
Link to publication
11:30
15m
Talk
Predicting open source contributor turnover from value-related discussions: An analysis of GitHub issues
Research Track
Jack Jamieson NTT Social Informatics Laboratories, Naomi Yamashita NTT Communication Science Laboratories, Eureka Foong University of Tokyo
11:45
15m
Talk
On the Helpfulness of Answering Developer Questions on Discord with Similar Conversations and Posts from the Past
Research Track
Alexander Lill University of Zurich, André N. Meyer University of Zurich, Thomas Fritz University of Zurich
12:00
15m
Talk
Exploring Assessment Criteria for Sustainable Software Engineering Processes
Software Engineering in Society
Michael Wahler Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW), Norbert Seyff University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland FHNW, Maria Susana Soriano Ramirez Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW)
Pre-print
12:15
15m
Talk
Adaptive User Interfaces for Software Supporting Chronic Disease
Software Engineering in Society
Wei Wang Monash University, Hourieh Khalajzadeh Deakin University, Australia, John Grundy Monash University, Anuradha Madugalla Monash University, Australia, Humphrey Obie Monash University
Pre-print Media Attached