What makes a good code example?
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This document summarizes a study of programming questions and answers on StackOverflow. The study found that the most recognized answers included concise code examples with explanations in the context of the question. Attributes like step-by-step solutions and links to external resources also contributed to higher-scored answers. In contrast, lower-scored answers lacked code and thorough explanations. The study suggests customized answers may better help programmers compared to typical documentation due to providing familiar contexts and reducing cognitive effort.
What makes a good code example?
- 1. What Makes a Good Code Example? A Study of Programming Q&A in StackOverflow Sayed Mehdi Nasehi,Jonathan Sillito, Frank Maurer, Chris Burns Presented By: Mohammad Masudur Rahman
- 2. Contents Why Code Example? Thesis Statement Stackoverflow Overview Scores, Answer Types & Question Types Attributes of Recognized/Good Answer Attributes of Low-vote Answer Important Findings & Suggestions Limitations & Future Works
- 3. Why Code Example? New technology, language, API & tools Learning psychology – working sample teaches much Developer’s productivity What is a good code example? –open question
- 4. Thesis Statement A good code example should include comprehensive code as well as the text explaining the code Programming Q&A site like Stackoverflow provides more customized and helpful answer to question rather than existing API documentation, code repositories or search engines
- 5. StackOverflow (http://stackoverflow.com/) A Programming Q&A site 1m users, 2.78m questions, 5.77m answers and 10.5m comments (up to March, 2012) Natural language search engine Question, tags, badges Answer, Editing, Comments Up vote, Down vote, Reputation 89 sites: http://stackexchange.com/sites#
- 6. Scores A metric for Good and bad example Score = (Up vote – Down Vote) Normalized Score 87% got <3, 13% got 10 High score threshold 4
- 7. Answer Types Good = Recognized Accepted = Recognized Unaccepted but score >=.4, then recognized Low vote (score <=.1) Long answer
- 8. Question Types Classification criteria – tag/topic & what to be solved Debug /Corrective Need-to-know How-to-do-it Seeking-different-solution
- 9. Attributes of a Recognized Answer Concise code Using question context Highlighting important elements Step by step solutions Providing links to external resources Inline documentation
- 10. Attributes of Low Vote Answer Lack of code Lack of explanation Shortcomings of solution
- 11. Answer Recognized but without Code Code may not be necessary Link to external resources API Queries
- 12. Important Suggestions Can the mining tools provide customized example from code repos. based on questioner’s expertise? –No, so make it intelligent Plaintext documentation- same for all, not helpful, so, make it wiki-like to meet user’s needs.
- 13. Important Findings Customized Answer: suits to questioner needs better than API Docs, code repositories or search engines. Customized Answer: reduces mental effort to understand things, reduces cognitive distance with info source Familiar context in solution Impact of question types on answer
- 14. My Observation Only considered Java related Q &A Threshold could be changed over time, Cohen’s kappa measurement Only score as a metric which may not be feasible Posting time, responder’s identity, question topic may affect the scores
- 15. Future Works Using to characteristics of good code example to we can suggest developer at coding time with IDE Evaluate open-source code quality