To evaluate how developers perform differently in solving programming tasks, i.e., which actions and behaviours are more beneficial to them than others and if there are any specific strategies and behaviours that may indicate good versus poor understanding of the task and program given to them, we used the MIMESIS plug-in to record developers’ interactions with the IDE. In a series of three studies we investigated the specific behaviour of developers solving a specific programming task. We focused on which source code files they visited, how they related pieces of code and knowledge to others and when and how successful they performed code edits. To cope with the variety of behaviours due to interpersonal differences such as different level of knowledge, development style or problem solving strategies, we used an abstraction of the observed behaviour, which enables for a better comparison between different individual attributes such as skill, speed and used strategies and also facilitates later automatic evaluation of behaviours, i.e. by using a software to react to.
Attila Szatmári Szegedi Tudományegyetem, Qusay Idrees Sarhan Department of Software Engineering, University of Szeged, Péter Attila Soha Department of Software Engineering, University of Szeged, Gergő Balogh Department of Software Engineering, University of Szeged, Árpád Beszédes Department of Software Engineering, University of Szeged
Niklas Krieger Institute of Software Engineering, University of Stuttgart, Sandro Speth Institute of Software Engineering, University of Stuttgart, Steffen Becker University of Stuttgart
Tim Kräuter Western Norway University of Applied Sciences, Patrick Stünkel Western Norway University of Applied Sciences, Adrian Rutle Western Norway University of Applied Sciences, Yngve Lamo Western Norway University of Applied Sciences
