Developers’ Perspective on Today’s and Tomorrow’s Programming Tool Assistance : A Survey
Kuang, Peng LU
; Söderberg, Emma
LU
and Höst, Martin
LU
(2024)
8th International Conference on on the Art, Science, and Engineering of Programming, Programming Companion 2024
p.108-116
- Abstract
Software development is a complex activity that needs a lot of tool assistance. Over the years there has been a lot of effort put into development of automated assistance to help with activities such as detection of issues via program analysis, or refactoring of code. Recently, the landscape of developer tool assistance is being disrupted with the entry of AI tools, such as Copilot and ChatGPT, powered via Large Language Models. Other kinds of tool assistance, for instance, gaze-driven assistance, is around the corner. What are programmers’ perceptions on tool assistance today? What do they see as good directions for the future? In this paper, we present the results of a survey where we asked developers about their programming... (More)
Software development is a complex activity that needs a lot of tool assistance. Over the years there has been a lot of effort put into development of automated assistance to help with activities such as detection of issues via program analysis, or refactoring of code. Recently, the landscape of developer tool assistance is being disrupted with the entry of AI tools, such as Copilot and ChatGPT, powered via Large Language Models. Other kinds of tool assistance, for instance, gaze-driven assistance, is around the corner. What are programmers’ perceptions on tool assistance today? What do they see as good directions for the future? In this paper, we present the results of a survey where we asked developers about their programming practices, experience with program analysis, and attitudes and views on enabling technologies, like AI and eye-tracking. We received 68 replies from a diverse group of developers from 12 countries. We found that 50% of the participants use program analysis and that many participants (N=28) already use AI-enabled tools for programming. We found that our participants were positive toward AI-powered tools, neutral toward eye-tracking, and negative toward gamification. We discuss these and other findings and point out directions for future work.
(Less)
- author
- Kuang, Peng
LU
; Söderberg, Emma
LU
and Höst, Martin
LU
- organization
- publishing date
- 2024-03
- type
- Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding
- publication status
- published
- subject
- keywords
- developer tools, eye tracking, machine learning, program analysis, programming
- host publication
- Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on the Art, Science, and Engineering of Programming
- editor
- Soderberg, Emma and Church, Luke
- pages
- 9 pages
- publisher
- Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
- conference name
- 8th International Conference on on the Art, Science, and Engineering of Programming, Programming Companion 2024
- conference location
- Lund, Sweden
- conference dates
- 2024-03-11 - 2024-03-15
- external identifiers
-
- scopus:85199097186
- ISBN
- 9798400706349
- DOI
- 10.1145/3660829.3660848
- language
- English
- LU publication?
- yes
- id
- 057227cf-59fe-4f14-bd66-fb45f20eb2c9
- date added to LUP
- 2024-10-04 10:32:03
- date last changed
- 2025-04-04 14:28:05
@inproceedings{057227cf-59fe-4f14-bd66-fb45f20eb2c9,
abstract = {{<p>Software development is a complex activity that needs a lot of tool assistance. Over the years there has been a lot of effort put into development of automated assistance to help with activities such as detection of issues via program analysis, or refactoring of code. Recently, the landscape of developer tool assistance is being disrupted with the entry of AI tools, such as Copilot and ChatGPT, powered via Large Language Models. Other kinds of tool assistance, for instance, gaze-driven assistance, is around the corner. What are programmers’ perceptions on tool assistance today? What do they see as good directions for the future? In this paper, we present the results of a survey where we asked developers about their programming practices, experience with program analysis, and attitudes and views on enabling technologies, like AI and eye-tracking. We received 68 replies from a diverse group of developers from 12 countries. We found that 50% of the participants use program analysis and that many participants (N=28) already use AI-enabled tools for programming. We found that our participants were positive toward AI-powered tools, neutral toward eye-tracking, and negative toward gamification. We discuss these and other findings and point out directions for future work.</p>}},
author = {{Kuang, Peng and Söderberg, Emma and Höst, Martin}},
booktitle = {{Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on the Art, Science, and Engineering of Programming}},
editor = {{Soderberg, Emma and Church, Luke}},
isbn = {{9798400706349}},
keywords = {{developer tools; eye tracking; machine learning; program analysis; programming}},
language = {{eng}},
pages = {{108--116}},
publisher = {{Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)}},
title = {{Developers’ Perspective on Today’s and Tomorrow’s Programming Tool Assistance : A Survey}},
url = {{http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/3660829.3660848}},
doi = {{10.1145/3660829.3660848}},
year = {{2024}},
}