Presentation I did at the Master Course (UFBA/UEFS) about (1) the role of refactoring and (2) usability in the evolution of APIs. Feel free to download it, so you can see the notes (almost everything is in portuguese, sorry about that )

1. Thiago Colares
@thicolares
UFBA / UEFS

2. Motivation
APIs
Evolution
Usability
Final thoughts

5. http://net.tutsplus.com/articles/news/the-increasing-importance-of-apis-in-web-development/

6. http://net.tutsplus.com/articles/news/the-increasing-importance-of-apis-in-web-development/

7. http://net.tutsplus.com/articles/news/the-increasing-importance-of-apis-in-web-development/

12. String locale =
String locale =
context.getResources()
context.getResources()
.getConfiguration()
.getConfiguration()
..
locale.getDisplayName(
locale.getDisplayName(
);
);

17. What this API does?
Main entities?
How those entities communicates?

18. AbstractFactory f =
AbstractFactory.getDefault();
Widget w = f.createWidget();
Widget w = Widget.create();
Widget w = Widget.create();

25. Browse
Select
Read
Navigate
Search
Switch
Use
Backtrack

26. Discovering Relevant Dependencies
Query Formulation
Exceptions
Web versus Documentation

27. …To regard the design refactoring
…To review documentation
…To improve de development tools
“Usability of software tools impacts developer
efficiency”
Steven Clarke

28.  The results also suggest the need of new software en-
gineering tools that detect and correct inconsistent
program updates when developers apply refactorings.
 Number of bug fixes increases after refactorings while
the time taken to fix bugs decreases after refactorings.
 API usability can be a significant barrier for programmers
 Scenario-based design / User-centered design
 You don’t need expensive usability labs
 But time, patience, willing participants, and a framework
with which to understand the results of your analysis.

29.  Kim, Miryung, Dongxiang Cai, and Sunghun Kim. "An empirical investigation into the
role of API-level refactorings during software evolution." Software Engineering (ICSE),
2011 33rd International Conference on. IEEE, 2011.
 Brian Ellis, Jeffrey Stylos, and Brad Myers. 2007. The Factory Pattern in API Design:
A Usability Evaluation. In Proceedings of the 29th international conference on
Software Engineering (ICSE '07). IEEE Computer Society, Washington, DC, USA, 302-
312. DOI=10.1109/ICSE.2007.85 http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/ICSE.2007.85
 Jeffrey Stylos and Steven Clarke. 2007. Usability Implications of Requiring Parameters
in Objects' Constructors. In Proceedings of the 29th international conference on
Software Engineering (ICSE '07). IEEE Computer Society, Washington, DC, USA, 529-
539. DOI=10.1109/ICSE.2007.92 http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/ICSE.2007.9
 J. Stylos and S. Clarke, “Usability implications of requir- ing parameters in objects’
constructors,” in Proceedings of the 29th International Conference on Software
Engineering, 2007, pp. 529–539.
 Ubo Icons Theme 0.1alpha, http://gnome-
look.org/content/show.php/Ubo+Icons+Theme?content=122078

30. @thicolares