Improving the quality of code snippets in stack overflow

Abstract

Question and answer (Q&A) websites like Stack Overflow are one of the important sources of code examples in which developers can ask their questions and leave their answers about programming issues. Since the number of programmers who use these websites are increasing and a large number of questions and answers are being posted there by them, verifying the quality of all the answers and particularly the code snippets in them is impossible. Consequently, some code snippets might be of low quality and/or with faults. To mitigate this issue, we introduce ExRec (Example Recommender), an Eclipse plugin with which programmers can contribute in improving the quality of code snippets in the answers to questions in the Stack Overow website. Using ExRec, a programmer can transfer a code snippet in the answer to a desired question in Stack Overow to her own program, apply her desired modifications to that code snippet, and then contribute the improved code snippet to Stack Overow as an answer to that particular question. Our evaluations of ExRec in a user study with 10 skilled programmers indicate that it is effective in practice and can help in improving the quality of code snippets in Stack Overow.