Publication Type

Journal Article

Version

acceptedVersion

Publication Date

5-2023

Abstract

Code reuse is an important part of software development. The adoption of code reuse practices is especially common among Node.js developers. The Node.js package manager, NPM, indexes over 1 Million packages and developers often seek out packages to solve programming tasks. Due to the vast number of packages, selecting the right package is difficult and time consuming. With the goal of improving productivity of developers that heavily reuse code through third-party packages, we present Node Code Query (NCQ), a Read-Eval-Print-Loop environment that allows developers to 1) search for NPM packages using natural language queries, 2) search for code snippets related to those packages, 3) automatically correct errors in these code snippets, 4) quickly setup new environments for testing those snippets, and 5) transition between search and editing modes. In two user studies with a total of 20 participants, we find that participants begin programming faster and conclude tasks faster with NCQ than with baseline approaches, and that they like, among other features, the search for code snippets and packages. Our results suggest that NCQ makes Node.js developers more efficient in reusing code.

Keywords

Library selection, Code reuse, code search

Discipline

Software Engineering

Research Areas

Software and Cyber-Physical Systems

Publication

IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering

Volume

49

Issue

5

First Page

3205

Last Page

3225

ISSN

0098-5589

Identifier

10.1109/TSE.2023.3248113

Publisher

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers

Additional URL

https://doi.org/10.1109/TSE.2023.3248113

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