How do Programmers Use the Internet? Discovering Domain Knowledge from Browsing and Coding Behaviors

Abstract

The Internet is an effective tool for learners to gain new knowledge. Often, people use search engines (e.g., Google) rather than accessing websites directly. People have their search techniques to find specific information. In particular, people with domain knowledge tend to search more efficiently than novices. By understanding the gap between people with domain knowledge and novices, the novice can understand the path to becoming an expert. Therefore, in this study, we wanted to know what differences exist in search and programming behavior with and without domain knowledge. In this experiment, we asked a group with and without domain knowledge to solve ten programming problems and collected search logs (input knowledge) and compilation logs (output knowledge). Specifically, the first dataset consisted of 13 participants who had taken a university programming class. The second dataset consisted of 20 participants who had not taken a programming class and had no domain knowledge. We examined differences in search and compilation behavior based on participants’ domain knowledge from this data. Since we observed a difference between each group when referring to the correlation coefficient, we performed a binary classification of novice and experienced participants using Random Forest, and achieved an average precision of 0.95, indicating that there were different trends in behavior with and without domain knowledge.