In this invited mini-keynote I was asked to speak towards the human and well being aspects in the Mining Software Repositories. More on the invited talk: https://conf.researchr.org/details/msr-2022/msr-2022-technical-papers/54/The-Next-Generation-of-Software-Developers

1. THENEXTGENERATIONOF
SOFTWAREDEVELOPERS
Denae Ford Robinson
Microsoft Research
MSR 2022 @DENAEFORDROBIN

2. When I think of MSR, I think…
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3. SUPERPOWERSOFMSRCOMMUNITY
3
Identifying
approaches to
intersect data sources
Being able to conduct
deep dives into data
and report insightful
observations
Providing
methodologies and
data sets that the
broader research
community can use
Doing all of these
things at scale

4. BUTWHERECOULDNEWSUPERPOWERSEMERGE?
4

5. NEXTGENERATIONOFDEVELOPERS
SOCIAL
TRANSPARENCY
SOCIETAL
IMPACT
HYBRID WORK
5

6. FROMTRADITIONALOSSSETTINGSTO……
6

7. OSS FOR SOCIAL GOOD:
Open source software projects where the outcome distinctly targets a community of people to
overcome a societal issue.
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DEVELOPERSUSINGTHEIRSKILLSTOHELPOTHERS
Yu Huang, Denae Ford, Thomas Zimmermann. Leaving My Fingerprints: Motivations and Challenges of Contributing to OSS for Social Good. To Appear
at International Conferences on Software Engineering (ICSE) 2021. May 2021. http://aka.ms/oss4sg

8. OSS FOR SOCIAL GOOD:
Open source software projects where the outcome distinctly targets a community of people to
overcome a societal issue.
7
DEVELOPERSUSINGTHEIRSKILLSTOHELPOTHERS
Yu Huang, Denae Ford, Thomas Zimmermann. Leaving My Fingerprints: Motivations and Challenges of Contributing to OSS for Social Good. To Appear
at International Conferences on Software Engineering (ICSE) 2021. May 2021. http://aka.ms/oss4sg

9. OSS4SGRESULTS:PROXIMITYOFIMPACT
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TABLE V: The responses to the question “Assume you only
have time to work on one project, please choose the one
from each of the three pairs below” (Q21). The three pairs of
projects are based on the scale of impact in terms of spatial,
temporal and social proximity.
Project Selection Based on Scale of Impact
Percentage
(n=404)
SPATIAL PROXIMITY
A: A project that is needed globally
(e.g., tracking pandemic issues like COVID19) 65.8%
B: A project that is needed only in my local area
(e.g., tracking local health issue)
34.2%
TEMPORAL PROXIMITY
A: A project that is beneficial in the long term
(e.g., monitor global warming)
57.7%
B: A project that is beneficial now
(e.g., monitor a recent flood disaster)
42.3%
SOCIAL PROXIMITY
A: A project that a stranger needs
(e.g., monitoring system for a health issue that
does not affect my family)
31.9%
B: A project that someone I know personally needs
(e.g., diabetes tracker my family, friend or myself
can use)
68.1%
“I sometimes get told by them that I’m speaking maybe on
a too technical of level.” (P14)
2) Survey: In our survey, we grouped and refined all the
observations on challenges in OSS4SG in the interviews,
and then combined with challenges in OSS from previous
studies [17]. Finally we designed 10 challenge statements. We
asked P-OSS4SG+ (i.e., with actual OSS4SG experience) to
rate how much they agreed on each challenge in OSS4SG, and
asked P-OSS+ to rate the agreement on each challenge based
on their experience in OSS. Each challenge statement is a five-
point Likert scale question: “Strongly Disagree”, “Disagree”,
“Neither Agree nor Disagree”, “Agree”, and “Strongly Agree”.
Table VI list the accumulated percentages of “Agree” and
“Strongly Agree” for each challenge in OSS4SG and OSS re-
spectively. This table rank all the challenges by the agreement
percentage of OSS4SG.
From Table VI, for both OSS4SG and OSS, “It is hard
for newcomers to understand how to contribute to the project.
(C1)” is reported to be the most challenging factor. OSS4SG
contributors reported a higher rate on “not knowing where to
find good projects to work on (C3)” (Delta = 12.9%), which
quantitatively verified the observations in the interviews. With
a significant difference on agreement, OSS4SG contributors
face less challenges with unreasonable feature requests (C9)
OSS4SG contributors more thoroughly
investigate the owners of projects; tend to
prioritize projects that meet global needs, have
longterm benefits, and benefit their personal
connections.

10. WHATCOULDMSRFORASOCIETALGOODLOOKLIKE?
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11. NEWDATASOURCES+APPROACHESTOMININGSOFTWAREREPOS
10
Where else are developers
communicating about their
experiences or well being?
How can we partner with developer
communities/orgs in a meaningful
way?
What are challenges in the developer
community that the MSR community
already has the tools to answer?

12. NEWDATASOURCES+APPROACHESTOMININGSOFTWAREREPOS
10
Where else are developers
communicating about their
experiences or well being?
How can we partner with developer
communities/orgs in a meaningful
way?
What are challenges in the developer
community that the MSR community
already has the tools to answer?

13. OPPORTUNITIES
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14. OPPORTUNITIES
11
Mining for user-safety and
safety of software builders

15. OPPORTUNITIES
11
Mining for user-safety and
safety of software builders

16. OPPORTUNITIES
11
Mining for user-safety and
safety of software builders
🚩🚩🚩
+

17. OPPORTUNITIES
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Mining for user-safety and
safety of software builders
🚩🚩🚩
+
False Positive ‘Welcoming’ Community

18. POTENTIALRESEARCHQUESTIONS
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How do we keep developers in
online communities feeling safe?
How does developer
psychological safety impact their
productivity?
What are the most robust data
sources for triangulating
developer safety?

19. BRINGINGDEVELOPMENTTOWHERETHENEXTGENERATION ISNOW
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20. BRINGINGDEVELOPMENTTOWHERETHENEXTGENERATION ISNOW
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21. BRINGINGDEVELOPMENTTOWHERETHENEXTGENERATION ISNOW
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22. AVISIONFORTHEMSRCOMMUNITY
How do we make sure we’re making meaningful use out of
the repositories we’re mining?
*How are we truly engaging the broader developer
community when we’re conducting analysis?
Challenge: What are we doing to turn our insights from
mining into powerful and digestible resources for the broader
community (not just for other researchers)?
DENAE@MICROSOFT.COM
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@DENAEFORDROBIN
SAINT
Software Analysis and INTelligence Engineering Systems
SAINTES