research-article

Code, camera, action: how software developers document and share program knowledge using YouTube

Authors:

Margaret-Anne Storey,

Andreas BergenAuthors Info & Claims

ICPC '15: Proceedings of the 2015 IEEE 23rd International Conference on Program Comprehension

Pages 104 - 114

Published: 16 May 2015 Publication History

Abstract

Creating documentation is a challenging task in software engineering and most techniques involve the laborious and sometimes tedious job of writing text. This paper explores an alternative to traditional text-based documentation, the screencast, which captures a developer's screen while they narrate how a program or software tool works. We conducted a study to investigate how developers produce and share developer-focused screencasts using the YouTube social platform. First, we identified and analyzed a set of development screencasts to determine how developers have adapted to the medium to meet the demands of development-related documentation needs. We also explored the techniques and strategies used for sharing software knowledge. Second, we interviewed screencast producers to understand their motivations for creating screencasts, and to uncover the perceived benefits and challenges in producing code-focused videos. Our findings reveal that video is a useful medium for communicating program knowledge between developers, and that developers build their online personas and reputation by sharing videos through social channels.

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Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

ICPC '15: Proceedings of the 2015 IEEE 23rd International Conference on Program Comprehension

May 2015

325 pages

General Chair:
Andrea De Lucia
University of Salerno, Italy
,
Program Chairs:
Christian Bird
Microsoft Research
,
Rocco Oliveto
University of Molise, Italy

Sponsors

ACM: Association for Computing Machinery
SIGSOFT: ACM Special Interest Group on Software Engineering
IEEE-CS\DATC: IEEE Computer Society
TCSE: IEEE Computer Society's Tech. Council on Software Engin.

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IEEE Press

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Published: 16 May 2015

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ICSE '15

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ICSE '15: 37th International Conference on Software Engineering

May 16 - 24, 2015

Florence, Italy

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https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/ICSE43902.2021.00091
Alahmadi MMalkadi AHaiduc S(2020)UI Screens Identification and Extraction from Mobile Programming ScreencastsProceedings of the 28th International Conference on Program Comprehension10.1145/3387904.3389265(319-330)Online publication date: 13-Jul-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3387904.3389265
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https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3379597.3387468
Escobar-Avila JVenuti DDi Penta MHaiduc SBeecham SDamian D(2019)A survey on online learning preferences for computer science and programmingProceedings of the 41st International Conference on Software Engineering: Software Engineering Education and Training10.1109/ICSE-SEET.2019.00026(170-181)Online publication date: 27-May-2019
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