Beyond the Code Itself: How Programmers Really Look at Pull RequestsSEIS
Developers in open source projects must make decisions on contributions from other community members, such as whether or not to accept a pull request. However, secondary factors—beyond the code itself—can influence those decisions. For example, signals from GitHub profiles, such as a number of followers, activity, names, or gender can also be considered when developers make decisions. In this paper, we examine how developers use these signals (or not) when making decisions about code contributions. To evaluate this question, we evaluate how signals related to perceived gender identity and code quality influenced decisions on accepting pull requests. Unlike previous work, we analyze this decision process with data collected from an eye-tracker. We analyzed differences in what signals developers said are important for themselves versus what signals they actually used to make decisions about others. We found that after the code snippet (x=57%), the second place programmers spent their time fixating on supplemental technical signals(x=32%), such as previous contributions and popular repositories. Diverging from what participants reported themselves, we also found that programmers fixated on social signals more than recalled.
Thu 30 May Times are displayed in time zone: Eastern Time (US & Canada) change
14:00 - 15:30: Software as a Social ConstructSoftware Engineering in Society at Mansfield / Sherbrooke Chair(s): Damian Andrew TamburriTU/e | |||
14:00 - 14:20 Talk | An Anatomy of Security Conversations in Stack OverflowSEIS Software Engineering in Society Tamara LopezThe Open University, Thein Tun, Arosha K BandaraThe Open University, Mark LevineUniversity of Exeter, Bashar NuseibehThe Open University (UK) & Lero (Ireland), Helen SharpThe Open University, UK | ||
14:20 - 14:40 Talk | Software Engineering in Civic Tech: A Case Study about Code for IrelandSEIS Software Engineering in Society Antti KnutasLUT University, Victoria PalacinLUT University, Giovanni MaccaniMaynooth University, Markus HelfertDublin City University Pre-print | ||
14:40 - 15:00 Talk | Beyond the Code Itself: How Programmers Really Look at Pull RequestsSEIS Software Engineering in Society Denae FordMicrosoft Research, Mahnaz BehrooziNCSU, Alexander SerebrenikEindhoven University of Technology, Chris ParninNCSU Pre-print | ||
15:00 - 15:10 Talk | Architecture Design Decision Maps for Software SustainabilitySEIS Software Engineering in Society Patricia LagoVrije Universiteit Amsterdam Pre-print | ||
15:10 - 15:30 Talk | Discussion PeriodSEIS Software Engineering in Society |