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Survey: Impact of TDD on developer's productivity and well-being.

 

Hey folks, how are you?

I am a member of a group of researchers interested in studying the impact of testing practices on developer's productivity and well-being.
?
Our goal is to improve the software engineering community understanding on how and why practices such as unit testing and test-driven development are effective beyond the impact on code design.
?
If you are willing to help, we have 12 quick questions to you!



Best,
Pedro
Computer Scientist P.hD.
 

Hi Pedro,
Is this work related to polarization ?

Would you share with us your results ?

Regards,
³Ò°ù¨¦²µ´Ç°ù²â

Le dim. 11 sept. 2022, 00:14, <pedro.calais@...> a ¨¦crit?:
Hey folks, how are you?

I am a member of a group of researchers interested in studying the impact of testing practices on developer's productivity and well-being.
?
Our goal is to improve the software engineering community understanding on how and why practices such as unit testing and test-driven development are effective beyond the impact on code design.
?
If you are willing to help, we have 12 quick questions to you!



Best,
Pedro
Computer Scientist P.hD.
 

Sorry, but as a retired academician and developer, such "promiscuous" surveys are totally worthless as a research tool.? No control for biases, especially self-selection biases.??

Please, work directly with software development organizations to observe what people do instead of what they say they do, and then survey only?the people you observe.? Why do computer scientists have no knowledge of social science research precepts?

On Sat, Sep 10, 2022 at 3:14 PM <pedro.calais@...> wrote:
Hey folks, how are you?

I am a member of a group of researchers interested in studying the impact of testing practices on developer's productivity and well-being.
?
Our goal is to improve the software engineering community understanding on how and why practices such as unit testing and test-driven development are effective beyond the impact on code design.
?
If you are willing to help, we have 12 quick questions to you!



Best,
Pedro
Computer Scientist P.hD.
 

Hi Gregory!

I will for sure share the results when the paper is ready.

What do you mean by polarization?

Best,
Pedro
 

Hi Steve!

I see your point on the limits of surveys; that's why this is just on of the 3 dimensions we are looking at! And I think the survey is probably the weakest evidence due to the reasons you just pointed out... I think it has its value as a complement though.

This may be a nice read:

Survey Guidelines in Software Engineering: An Annotated Review



Pedro
 

However, if you survey the people you observe, then you have something useful.? If you are not doing observations of how people are actually working, it?does not matter what your other dimensions are because it is divorced from reality,? Most people do not actually know how they work and/or answer?survey questions based on rationalizations.? Involve at least one real social scientist in your research group to avoid wasting your efforts.

Uncontrolled surveys are not just limited - they are deceptive and can easily move your research in a useless direction.

On Mon, Sep 12, 2022 at 4:54 AM <pedro.calais@...> wrote:
Hi Steve!

I see your point on the limits of surveys; that's why this is just on of the 3 dimensions we are looking at! And I think the survey is probably the weakest evidence due to the reasons you just pointed out... I think it has its value as a complement though.

This may be a nice read:

Survey Guidelines in Software Engineering: An Annotated Review



Pedro

 

Software development is a people problem, not a technical problem.? Understand that you are actually researching people and how they work, so do not ignore hundreds of years of social science research techniques.?


On Tue, Sep 13, 2022 at 10:08 AM Steven Gordon <sgordonphd@...> wrote:
However, if you survey the people you observe, then you have something useful.? If you are not doing observations of how people are actually working, it?does not matter what your other dimensions are because it is divorced from reality,? Most people do not actually know how they work and/or answer?survey questions based on rationalizations.? Involve at least one real social scientist in your research group to avoid wasting your efforts.

Uncontrolled surveys are not just limited - they are deceptive and can easily move your research in a useless direction.

On Mon, Sep 12, 2022 at 4:54 AM <pedro.calais@...> wrote:
Hi Steve!

I see your point on the limits of surveys; that's why this is just on of the 3 dimensions we are looking at! And I think the survey is probably the weakest evidence due to the reasons you just pointed out... I think it has its value as a complement though.

This may be a nice read:

Survey Guidelines in Software Engineering: An Annotated Review



Pedro

 

What do you mean by polarization?

I went on your personal page and discovered you've worked on polarization, biases and misinformation.

Like Steve I was surprised by the content of the survey oriented "feelings" and wondered if your goal was to measure how biased tdd practioners are or something like that.

Practicing tdd or not, polarize dev because it's hard to have tdd practioners and non-practioners working on the same source code.

Also I think, but I may be wrong, once you've been in tdd, you won't go back to writing tests after or no test at all.?
I don't want to talk for others so personnaly, I'd immediatly refuse a project where I won't be able to do tdd (among other practices, this one is mandatory)
It might seem an extreme position that might have interests for research.

Regards,?
Gregory
 

I've not taken the time to look at the survey - sorry. However I did think the OP might be interested in a recent item from?Christiaan Verwijs:?

BTW Christiaan has been doing survey work towards his PhD for some years.

Cheers
Mark - a human

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