Programmers who want to improve their skills and background in software development rely heavily on developer social platforms such as GitHub and Stack Overflow to enhance their learning. Stack Overflow provides answers to questions they have about languages or library skills they wish to acquire, while contributing to open-source projects hosted on sites like GitHub gives them valuable experience. Students also use these platforms during their education: most will rely heavily on Stack Overflow at some point in their schooling, while many can benefit from contributing to GitHub projects to build their expertise and professional portfolios. We already know from previous research that developers face barriers participating on these platforms, and therefore we may expect that at least some students will experience similar or possibly even bigger barriers. This research describes a semi-structured interview study followed by a survey with university students to explore how they use the GitHub and Stack Overflow platforms. I identified the benefits the students report from using these tools and the barriers they face. I have concluded with some preliminary recommendations on how to reduce the hurdles students may face with these and other developer social platforms, and I have also suggested future work to mitigate these roadblocks. / Graduate
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:uvic.ca/oai:dspace.library.uvic.ca:1828/13191 |
| Date | 29 July 2021 |
| Creators | Bhasin, Trishala |
| Contributors | Murray, Adam, Storey, Margaret-Anne |
| Source Sets | University of Victoria |
| Language | English, English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | Available to the World Wide Web |
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