This document summarizes a study of programming questions and answers on StackOverflow. The study found that the most recognized answers included concise code examples with explanations in the context of the question. Attributes like step-by-step solutions and links to external resources also contributed to higher-scored answers. In contrast, lower-scored answers lacked code and thorough explanations. The study suggests customized answers may better help programmers compared to typical documentation due to providing familiar contexts and reducing cognitive effort.

1. What Makes a Good Code Example?
A Study of Programming Q&A in StackOverflow
Sayed Mehdi
Nasehi,Jonathan Sillito,
Frank Maurer, Chris Burns
Presented By: Mohammad Masudur Rahman

2. Contents
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Why Code Example?
Thesis Statement
Stackoverflow Overview
Scores, Answer Types & Question Types
Attributes of Recognized/Good Answer
Attributes of Low-vote Answer
Important Findings & Suggestions
Limitations & Future Works

3. Why Code Example?
 New
technology, language, API & tools
 Learning psychology – working sample
teaches much
 Developer’s productivity
 What is a good code example? –open
question

4. Thesis Statement
A
good code example should include
comprehensive code as well as the text
explaining the code
 Programming Q&A site like Stackoverflow
provides more customized and helpful
answer to question rather than existing API
documentation, code repositories or search
engines

5. StackOverflow (http://stackoverflow.com/)
A
Programming Q&A site 1m users, 2.78m
questions, 5.77m answers and 10.5m
comments (up to March, 2012)
 Natural language search engine
 Question, tags, badges
 Answer, Editing, Comments
 Up vote, Down vote, Reputation
 89 sites: http://stackexchange.com/sites#

6. Scores
A
metric for Good and bad example
 Score = (Up vote – Down Vote)
 Normalized Score
 87% got <3, 13% got 10
 High score threshold 4

7. Answer Types
 Good
= Recognized
 Accepted = Recognized
 Unaccepted but score >=.4, then recognized
 Low vote (score <=.1)
 Long answer

8. Question Types
 Classification
criteria – tag/topic & what to
be solved
 Debug /Corrective
 Need-to-know
 How-to-do-it
 Seeking-different-solution

9. Attributes of a Recognized Answer
 Concise
code
 Using question context
 Highlighting important elements
 Step by step solutions
 Providing links to external resources
 Inline documentation

10. Attributes of Low Vote Answer
 Lack
of code
 Lack of explanation
 Shortcomings of solution

11. Answer Recognized but without Code
 Code
may not be necessary
 Link to external resources
 API Queries

12. Important Suggestions
 Can
the mining tools provide customized
example from code repos. based on
questioner’s expertise? –No, so make it
intelligent
 Plaintext documentation- same for all, not
helpful, so, make it wiki-like to meet user’s
needs.

13. Important Findings
 Customized
Answer: suits to questioner
needs better than API Docs, code
repositories or search engines.
 Customized Answer: reduces mental effort to
understand things, reduces cognitive
distance with info source
 Familiar context in solution
 Impact of question types on answer

14. My Observation
 Only
considered Java related Q &A
 Threshold could be changed over time,
Cohen’s kappa measurement
 Only score as a metric which may not be
feasible
 Posting time, responder’s identity, question
topic may affect the scores

15. Future Works
 Using
to characteristics of good code
example to we can suggest developer at
coding time with IDE
 Evaluate open-source code quality

16. Thank you
Questions?