Understanding How and Why Developers Seek and Analyze API-related Opinions

Abstract

With the advent and proliferation of online developer forums as informal documentation, developers often share their opinions about the APIs they use. Thus, opinions shape developer perception and decisions related to software development. While many developers refer to and rely on such opinion-rich information about APIs, we found little research that investigates the use and benefits of public opinions. To understand how developers seek and evaluate API opinions, we conducted two surveys of total 178 professional software developers. We analyzed the data in two dimensions, each corresponding to specific needs related to API reviews: (1) Needs for seeking API reviews, and (2) Needs for automated tool support to assess the reviews. We observed that developers seek for API reviews and often have to summarize those for diverse development needs (e.g., API suitability). Developers also make conscious efforts to judge the trustworthiness of the provided opinions and believe that automated tool support to analyze API reviews can assist in diverse development scenarios, such as saving time in API selection to making informed decisions on a particular API features.