Analyzing Web Search Strategy of Software Developers to Modify Source Codes

• Published in: IEICE Transactions on Information and Systems Vol. E105.D; no. 1; pp. 31 - 36
• Main Authors: NAKASAI, Keitaro, MATSUMOTO, Kenichi, TSUNODA, Masateru
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Tokyo The Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers 01.01.2022; Japan Science and Technology Agency
• Subjects: Guidelines; Keywords; Search engines; Search methods; Search strategies; Software development; subjective experiment; web search strategy
• ISSN: 0916-8532; 1745-1361
• DOI: 10.1587/transinf.2021MPL0004

Software developers often use a web search engine to improve work efficiency. However, web search strategies (e.g., frequently changing web search keywords) may be different for each developer. In this study, we attempted to define a better web search strategy. Although many previous studies analyzed web search behavior in programming, they did not provide guidelines for web search strategies. To suggest guidelines for web search strategies, we asked 10 subjects four questions about programming which they had to solve, and analyzed their behavior. In the analysis, we focused on the subjects' task time and the web search metrics defined by us. Based on our experiment, to enhance the effectiveness of the search, we suggest (1) that one should not go through the next search result pages, (2) the number of keywords in queries should be suppressed, and (3) previously used keywords must be avoided when creating a new query.