An Exploratory Study of Sharing Strategic Programming Knowledge

In many domains, strategic knowledge is documented and shared through checklists and handbooks. In software engineering, however, developers rarely share strategic knowledge for approaching programming problems, in contrast to other artifacts and despite its importance to productivity and success. To understand barriers to sharing, we simulated a programming strategy knowledge-sharing platform, asking experienced developers to articulate a programming strategy and others to use these strategies while providing feedback. Throughout, we asked strategy authors and users to reflect on the challenges they faced. Our analysis revealed that developers could share strategic knowledge. However, they struggled in choosing a level of detail and understanding the diversity of the potential audience. While authors required substantial feedback, users struggled to give it and authors to interpret it. Our results suggest that sharing strategic knowledge differs from sharing code and raises challenging questions about how knowledge-sharing platforms should support search and feedback.