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ESEC/FSE 2021
Thu 19 - Sat 28 August 2021 Clowdr Platform

Modern communication platforms such as Gitter and Slack play an increasingly critical role in supporting software teamwork, especially in open source development.Conversations on such platforms often contain intensive, valuable information that may be used for better understanding OSS developer communication and collaboration. However, little work has been done in this regard. To bridge the gap, this paper reports a first comprehensive empirical study on developers' live chat, investigating when they interact, what community structures look like, which topics are discussed, and how they interact. We manually analyze 749 dialogs in the first phase, followed by an automated analysis of over 173K dialogs in the second phase. We find that developers tend to converse more often on weekdays, especially on Wednesdays and Thursdays (UTC), that there are three common community structures observed, that developers tend to discuss topics such as API usages and errors, and that six dialog interaction patterns are identified in the live chat communities. Based on the findings, we provide recommendations for individual developers and OSS communities, highlight desired features for platform vendors, and shed light on future research directions. We believe that the findings and insights will enable a better understanding of developers' live chat, pave the way for other researchers, as well as a better utilization and mining of knowledge embedded in the massive chat history.

Thu 26 Aug

Displayed time zone: Athens change

08:00 - 09:00
Human Aspects—Collaborative Software EngineeringResearch Papers +12h
Chair(s): Xin Tan Peking University, China, Alexander Serebrenik Eindhoven University of Technology
08:00
10m
Paper
SmartCommit: A Graph-Based Interactive Assistant for Activity-Oriented CommitsDistinguished Paper AwardArtifacts AvailableArtifacts Reusable
Research Papers
Bo Shen Peking University, Wei Zhang Peking University, Christian Kästner Carnegie Mellon University, Haiyan Zhao Peking University, Zhao Wei Huawei Technologies, Guangtai Liang Huawei Technologies, Zhi Jin Peking University
DOI
08:10
10m
Paper
A First Look at Developers’ Live Chat on GitterArtifacts Available
Research Papers
Lin Shi Institute of Software at Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xiao Chen Institute of Software at Chinese Academy of Sciences, Ye Yang Stevens Institute of Technology, Hanzhi Jiang Institute of Software at Chinese Academy of Sciences, Ziyou Jiang Institute of Software at Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nan Niu University of Cincinnati, Qing Wang Institute of Software at Chinese Academy of Sciences
DOI
08:20
10m
Paper
Reel Life vs. Real Life: How Software Developers Share Their Daily Life through Vlogs
Research Papers
Souti Chattopadhyay Oregon State University, Thomas Zimmermann Microsoft Research, Denae Ford Microsoft Research
DOI
08:30
30m
Live Q&A
Q&A (Human Aspects—Collaborative Software Engineering)
Research Papers

20:00 - 21:00
Human Aspects—Collaborative Software EngineeringResearch Papers
Chair(s): Kelly Lyons University of Toronto
20:00
10m
Paper
SmartCommit: A Graph-Based Interactive Assistant for Activity-Oriented CommitsDistinguished Paper AwardArtifacts AvailableArtifacts Reusable
Research Papers
Bo Shen Peking University, Wei Zhang Peking University, Christian Kästner Carnegie Mellon University, Haiyan Zhao Peking University, Zhao Wei Huawei Technologies, Guangtai Liang Huawei Technologies, Zhi Jin Peking University
DOI
20:10
10m
Paper
A First Look at Developers’ Live Chat on GitterArtifacts Available
Research Papers
Lin Shi Institute of Software at Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xiao Chen Institute of Software at Chinese Academy of Sciences, Ye Yang Stevens Institute of Technology, Hanzhi Jiang Institute of Software at Chinese Academy of Sciences, Ziyou Jiang Institute of Software at Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nan Niu University of Cincinnati, Qing Wang Institute of Software at Chinese Academy of Sciences
DOI
20:20
10m
Paper
Reel Life vs. Real Life: How Software Developers Share Their Daily Life through Vlogs
Research Papers
Souti Chattopadhyay Oregon State University, Thomas Zimmermann Microsoft Research, Denae Ford Microsoft Research
DOI
20:30
30m
Live Q&A
Q&A (Human Aspects—Collaborative Software Engineering)
Research Papers