Software Professionals Research Articles

Pair Programming – Cubic Prediction Model Results for Random Pairs and Individual Junior Programmers

Due to the rapidly evolving technology in the dynamic world, there is a growing desire among software clients for swift delivery of high-quality software. Agile software development satisfies this need and has been widely and appropriately accepted by software professionals. The maintainability of such software, however, has a significant impact on its quality. Unfortunately, existing works neglected to consider timely delivery and instead concentrated primarily on the flexibility component of maintainability. This research looked at maintainability as a function of time to rectify codes among Individual Junior and Random pair software developers. Data was acquired from an experiment performed on software developers in the agile environment and analyzed to develop the quality model metrics for maintainability which was used for prediction. One hundred programmers each received a set of agile codes created in the Python programming language, with deliberate bugs ranging from one to ten. The cubic regression model was used for predicting time spent on debugging errors above ten bugs. Results show that the random pair programmers spent an average time of 21.88 min/error while the individual programmers spent a lesser time of 16.57 min/error.

An In-Depth Review of Test Automation Frameworks: Types and Trade-offs

As the domain of software development continues to progress in terms of intricacy and magnitude, the integration of automated testing has become a vital element in ensuring the excellence and dependability of software. The implementation of automated testing frameworks assumes a pivotal role in streamlining the testing procedure; nevertheless, the selection of the appropriate framework category presents challenges and necessitates making prudent compromises. This academic paper presents a comprehensive exploration of automated testing frameworks, exhaustively investigating their diverse categories, attributes, and the associated compromises that emerge from their adoption. The paper initiates with a comprehensive examination of the literature, encompassing a concise overview of the current research and industry patterns regarding test automation frameworks. Following this, it presents an intricate evaluation of various types of frameworks, such as keyword-driven, data-driven, and behavior-driven frameworks, clarifying their individual principles and functionalities. One of the main topics explored in this paper concerns the factors that influence the choice of a particular type of test automation framework. By presenting a framework for decision-making, we offer guidance to professionals and organizations in making informed decisions that align with their project requirements, team expertise, and testing goals. Furthermore, this paper critically evaluates the trade-offs and challenges associated with each type of framework, addressing concerns related to different aspects of the framework. To assist professionals and decision-makers, we conclude by providing best practices and recommendations for effectively implementing and managing test automation frameworks. Moreover, we investigate the perspective of test automation frameworks, accentuating emerging patterns and contemplating the consequences of developing technologies like artificial intelligence and machine learning. In summary, this paper presents a comprehensive guide to the different types and trade-offs of test automation frameworks, equipping software professionals with the knowledge and insights necessary to make well-informed decisions and enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of their testing processes.

PHYSICAL AND MENTAL HEALTH STATUS OF TEACHERS AND SOFTWARE PROFESSIONALS WORKING FROM HOME DURING COVID-19

The study attempted to investigate the physical and mental health of teachers and software professionals working from home since the start of COVID-19. The data was collected between March and April months of 2022.The study was conducted in the Bheemadol, Tanuku ,Tadepalligudem mandals of West Godavari district, Andhra Pradesh.The sample consisted of 120 respondents (60 teachers and 60 software professionals). The age group of the respondents was 25-35 years. Equal number of male and female respondents were selected for the study. The questionnaire developed by Verma and Pershad (1985) was used to measure the physical and mental health of teachers and software professionals the data was used analyzed by descriptive and inferential statistics. The study concluded that teachers were experiencing good physical and mental health status when compared to IT professionals. Interestingly nearly 50% of the respondents irrespective of gender were found to have good physical and psychological health status while working from home. However, significant difference was found in the physical and mental health status of teachers and software professionals.

An Approach to Periarthritis of Shoulder Joint an Ayurvedic Perspective

Periarthritis of the shoulder is a painful, progressive, and disabling disease involving the shoulder joint. The structures involved in the disease are joint capsule, tendons, ligaments, and bursae. As the shoulder movements are painful, the disease makes homemakers, software professionals, skilled workers, manual labourers, and athletes’ lives miserable. The patients were unable to do routine activities like combing hair, dressing, undressing, and doing overhead activities. The initial stages of the disease can be correlated with features of Amsa sandhi sopha having Raktha pitha predominance. The procedures like Lepanam, Upanaham, and internal medications adopted in this stage do not give permanent and complete relief from symptoms. Jaloukavacharana (leech therapy) is selected in the present study by considering the Dosha vitiation - in the initial stages of the disease, as it has anti-inflammatory and analgesic effects. Three Jaloukas (leeches) are applied at a time with intervals of three weeks over the glenohumeral joint (shoulder joint). Assessments were done before treatment, 8th, 15th and 22nd days. The results showed Jaloukavacharana was effective in the first stage of the disease.

Resist the Hype!: Practical Recommendations to Cope With Résumé-Driven Development

Technology trends play an important role in the hiring process for software and IT professionals. In a recent study of 591 software professionals in both hiring (130) and technical (558) roles, we found empirical support for a tendency to overemphasize technology trends in résumés and the application process. 60% of the hiring professionals agreed that such trends would influence their job advertisements. Among the software professionals, 82% believed that using trending technologies in their daily work would make them more attractive for potential future employers. This phenomenon has previously been reported anecdotally and somewhat humorously under the label Résumé-Driven Development (RDD). Our article seeks to initiate a more serious debate about the consequences of RDD on software development practice. We explain how the phenomenon may constitute a harmful self-sustaining dynamic, and provide practical recommendations for both the hiring and applicant perspectives to change the current situation for the better.

What Do Transgender Software Professionals Say About a Career in the Software Industry?

The new remote work structures resulting from the post-pandemic are producing several positive outcomes in the software industry, including improving diversity in software teams. Diversity is an essential aspect of software development because technology influences almost every aspect of modern society; therefore, if the software industry lacks diversity, software products might unintentionally constrain groups of individuals instead of promoting an equalitarian experience to all. In this study, we investigate one aspect of diversity in the software industry: the perspectives of transgender software professionals about a career in software engineering. Our findings demonstrate that trans people choose careers in software engineering because software development environments are safer and more flexible. However, these professionals face several limitations related to teamwork, such as difficulty in engaging with co-workers and a reduced sense of belonging. Remote and hybrid work in software companies is helping these professionals to cope with these limitations.

What have we learned? A conceptual framework on New Zealand software professionals and companies’ response to COVID-19

What have we learned? A conceptual framework on New Zealand software professionals and companies’ response to COVID-19

Soft skills required from software professionals in New Zealand

Soft skills required from software professionals in New Zealand

Challenges of Working from Home in Software Development During Covid-19 Lockdowns

The COVID-19 pandemic in 2020/2021/2022 and the resulting lockdowns forced many companies to switch to working from home, swiftly, on a large scale, and without preparation. This situation created unique challenges for software development, where individual software professionals had to shift instantly from working together at a physical venue to working remotely from home. Our research questions focus on the challenges of software professionals who work from home due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which we studied empirically at a German bank. We conducted a case study employing a mixed methods approach. We aimed to cover both the breadth of challenges via a quantitative survey, as well as a deeper understanding of these challenges via the follow-up qualitative analysis of 15 semi-structured interviews. In this article, we present the key impediments employees faced during the crisis, as well as their similarities and differences to the known challenges in distributed software development (DSD). We also analyze the employees’ job satisfaction and how the identified challenges impact job satisfaction. In our study, we focus on challenges in communication, collaboration, tooling, and management. The findings of the study provide insights into this emerging topic of high industry relevance. At the same time, the study contributes to the existing academic research on work from home and on the COVID-19 pandemic aftermath.

The Remote Working Genie Is Out of the Office Bottle

Although remote working has been adopted in some firms for many years, it has been largely marginalized in the sense that the mainstream of software engineering practice has involved groups of software professionals congregating on a daily basis in centralized offices. However, with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, remote working has rapidly become widespread. Companies and their employees have grappled with difficult adjustments during this transition, as might be expected in face of an international emergency. One suspects however that remote working will endure in some form in the post-emergency phase. Rather than merely <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">coping</i> as we do today, to be effective and sustainable, post-pandemic remote working will require a deep rethink of fundamental practice. This article provides some signposts to aid the journey from <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">coping</i> with remote work to <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">thriving</i> in remote working contexts.

Transparency, openness and privacy among software professionals: discourses and practices surrounding use of the digital calendar

Abstract Research on the groupware calendar system (GCS) has sought to understand its situated use in workplace contexts, revealing insights around design, culture, and self-understanding. A critical look at how knowledge workers use the GCS, and conceptualize of this use, reveals often overlooked sociotechnical values that figure prominently in workers’ lives. At a time when the public–private entanglement has become top-of-mind, this article adds to research on the GCS and professional subjectivity. It shows how organizational values circulate through use of the GCS and explores how hierarchy is negotiated on it, in part through design. It finds that senior-level workers are afforded opportunities to make their calendars private, while nonsenior workers are met with frustration when doing so. The article draws from a multi-sited ethnography, focusing on interviews with software workers in Canada. Findings suggest that the logistical functions of the GCS shape the affective dimensions related to its use.

It’s about time: How to study intertemporal choice in systems design

Decision making pervades software and systems engineering. Intertemporal decisions involve trade-offs among outcomes at different points in time. They play a central role in systems design, as recognised since the inception of the software engineering (SE) field. They are also crucial for the sustainability of design decisions. However, temporal decision making is not adequately understood in SE. The field of Judgement and Decision Making (JDM) offers important empirical findings and research methods that could be utilised. This article establishes a baseline for studying how software professionals handle intertemporal choices. It examines how temporal distance affects choices in an example scenario, explores in what areas of software development such decisions can be found, and examines how systems design decisions can be characterised and studied as intertemporal. We developed a method to study intertemporal choice in SE, based on an initial set of psychological theory grounded in JDM. We instantiated the method in a study to elicit responses to an intertemporal choice task followed by a Cognitive Task Analysis (CTA) interview. We found that study participants overall tended to discount future outcomes, but individual participants varied wildly in how they valued present vs. future outcomes. They indicated several locations in which intertemporal choices occur in everyday software development. Based on these findings, and by reconciling our initial theory with existing JDM theory and results, we further developed and refined our theory and study method into a framework for studying intertemporal decision making in SE. To obtain a basis for more sustainable software systems design decisions, SE research should adopt a more comprehensive, detailed, and empirically consistent way of understanding and studying intertemporal choices. We provide suggestions for how future research could achieve practical methods that address essential characteristics of real-life systems design decisions.

Practical Consequences of Quality Views in Assessing Software Quality

The authors’ previously published research delved into the theory of software product quality modelling, model views, concepts, and terminologies. They also analysed this specific field from the point of view of uncertainty, and possible descriptions based on fuzzy set theory and fuzzy logic. Laying a theoretical foundation was necessary; however, software professionals need a more tangible and practical approach for their everyday work. Consequently, the authors devote this paper to filling in this gap; it aims to illustrate how to interpret and utilise the previous findings, including the established taxonomy of the software product quality models. The developed fuzzy model’s simplification is also presented with a Generalized Additive Model approximation. The paper does not require any formal knowledge of uncertainty computations and reasoning under uncertainty, nor does it need a deep understanding of quality modelling in terms of terminology, concepts, and meta-models, which were necessary to prepare the taxonomy and relevance ranking. The paper investigates how to determine the validity of statements based on a given software product quality model; moreover, it considers how to tailor and adjust quality models to the particular project’s needs. The paper also describes how to apply different software product quality models for different quality views to take advantage of the automation potential offered for the measurement and assessment of source code quality. Furthermore, frequent pitfalls are illustrated with their corresponding resolutions, including an unmeasured quality property that is found to be important and needs to be included in the measurement and assessment process.

Salary Prediction System using Machine Learning

Salary prediction is a popular problem among the Data Science community for complete beginners. Through this regression analysis, we found a perfect linear relationship between the salary and the job experience of the people. It means more job experience results in a higher salary. This research paper presents a software Salary Prediction System that aims to address the challenge of accurately estimating salaries in the software industry. The system provides valuable insights for employers and employees in the face of increasing demand for skilled software professionals and the need for fair compensation.

What do software startups need from UX work?

Empirical research on software development practices in startups is growing. However, little has been investigated about how User eXperience (UX) work has been carried out in software startups. The primary objective of this paper is to investigate what software startups need from UX work. To achieve this goal, we conducted open-ended interviews and retrospective meetings with 16 software professionals from two software startups in Brazil. We analysed the data qualitatively using different coding approaches: initial coding, focused coding, and theoretical coding. We found 14 UX work-related needs which emerged from the daily practices used for software development in the two startups studied. Based on our findings, we propose an initial theoretical framework that highlights two theoretical themes and four groups underlying the needs identified. Our study reveals several relationships between UX work-related needs which are helpful to understand in order to identify what startups need from UX work in practice and to focus startup teams' efforts on the most urgent needs. As future work, we plan to explore ways in which these needs may be addressed so that UX work may be put into practice in software startups.

Designing an Effective Teaching Learning Environment for an Undergraduate Software Engineering Course

Software engineering is a core theory course offered in undergraduate engineering programmes which deals with various systematic approaches, methods, and tools that can be employed for designing, developing, testing, and maintaining quality software applications. It is one of the challenging courses for the teaching faculty. After graduation, the students are expected to practice software engineering principles and practices in their prospective projects. In order to satisfy the industrial requirement, and to create industry ready software professionals, software engineering course is offered as theory cum practical course. This article focuses on setting up an effective learning environment for learning software engineering courses. The course is blended with traditional classroom teaching methodology along with a set of pedagogical practices, active learning strategies, ICT tools for content delivery and assessment. This enhanced approach in teaching learning methodology improves student learning outcomes, which in turn helps them to adopt corporate practices more easily.

EVALUATING THE ORAL HEALTH KNOWLEDGE ATTITUDE PRACTICE AND MENTAL STRESS LEVEL AMONG SOFTWARE PROFESSIONALS WITH SMOKING HABIT IN TAMIL NADU - A CROSS SECTIONAL SURVEY

Introduction: Adult tobacco use is a public health concern, and among software professionals, lifestyle choices and jobrelated stress are risk factors. The negative effects of smoking will be more pronounced in today's youth due to early smoking initiation, as well as in the long run for young individuals who develop a smoking habit and continue to smoke into adulthood. The purpose and goals of this study are to evaluate the oral health disparities and degree of mental stress among Tamil Nadu's software workers. Using an online survey site, a cross-sectional study of Materials And Methods: software professionals in Tamil Nadu was carried out. The sample size was calculated to be 550 based on the percentage of software workers that smoke. All potential human resources received the online survey. The findings of statistical analysis on the responses gathered were attained. : In this study, the response rate was 86%, and th Results e prevalence of smokers—including both men and women—was 78%. There are some substantial differences in oral health among software workers who smoke, including tooth discoloration and poor aesthetics. After smoking, stress levels are noticeably lower, which has an effect on the development of smoking as a habit. : It is crucial to f Conclusion ocus on this population since smoking's negative effects on dental health and the mental health of software professionals because of their line of work are ongoing challenges. Tobacco control and tobacco cessation programmes also remain crucial public and individual health issues

Dimensions of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

This paper reports on the ACM SPLASH 2022 conference panel on the Software Profession Dimensions of DEI [Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion]. The panelists observed that increased awareness for the dimensions of DEI will help reduce inequity in systems and technologies. The panel further observed that there are dimensions of diversity to consider beyond age, color, gender, and physical ability. As technologists, we need to leverage diverse talents and perspectives, including by those who may not have in-depth domain knowledge or a university education specific to computer science or engineering. Panelists included academic researchers and industry practitioners: experts in human-computer interaction, teamwork, AI applications, systems design, and gender diversity issues. The hybrid organization of the panel enabled participants from Taiwan and North America to join the in-room Australian and New Zealand panelists. Panelists explored a variety of related topics, ranging from how software can cause harm to the risks of "unconscious bias" in R&amp;D and the challenges of building diverse teams. Panelists shared observations that AI and ML systems can be negatively impacted by the bias inherent with inadequate or incomplete training data used to tune algorithms. The panel discussed and summarized questions to foster increased DEI awareness by software professionals, researchers, and community leaders.

Development of an optimally designed real-time automatic citrus fruit grading–sorting​ machine leveraging computer vision-based adaptive deep learning model

Conventional automation approaches for postharvest operations are plagued by time and data inefficiency seldom leading to suboptimal solutions. Automatic machines often require highly skilled software professionals for calibration and reconfiguration thus making the technology prone to high costs. Contemporary sensors and smart devices capable of handling deep learning image analytics have been employed in the present study for the development of an automatic machine that performs postharvest operations, like—washing, vision-based sorting and weight-based grading of citrus fruits with much reduced human effort while achieving excellent performance for the designated tasks. Accuracy of performance was ensured by the optimal design of mechanical components carried out by kinematic synthesis and dimensional analysis. The machine was equipped with an effective custom lightweight CNN model “SortNet” that was designed and tuned to carry out vision-based classification of citrus fruits into “accept” and “reject” based on surface characteristics. SortNet was less complex and took less computational time while exhibiting comparable accuracy with respect to existing state-of-the-art pre-trained deep learning models. An embedded system operated by a single-board computer was used in the weight grading section for segregating fruits based on three weight categories. Evaluation, realization and transferability of the above said strategy was demonstrated by the real hardware with physical actuators working in real-time to serve as proof-of-concept for a sustainable solution to postharvest automation of citrus fruits.

Cyberchondria among information technology professionals of Bhubaneswar by using cyberchondria severity scale (CSS-15).

Internet can act as an excellent resource for gaining valuable health related information. However, excessive online research and investigation about health-related issues may impose a negative impact. The term cyberchondria is used to describe a clinical condition in which frequent internet searches for health-related information leads to exaggerated anxieties about physical well-being. To determine the prevalence of cyberchondria and associated factors among the information technology professionals of Bhubaneswar in India. A cross-sectional study was carried out among 243 software professionals in Bhubaneswar using a previously validated Cyberchondria Severity Scale (CSS-15) questionnaire. Descriptive statistics in terms of number, percentage, mean and standard deviation were presented. Independent t-test and one-way analysis of variance was applied to compare the cyberchondria score between two and more than two independent variables respectively. From 243 individuals 130 (53.5%) were males and 113 (46.5%) were females with mean age 29.82±6.67 years. The prevalence of cyberchondria severity was found to be 46.5%. The mean cyberchondria score of all study subjects was 43.80±10.62. It was significantly higher among those who spend more than 1 hour in the internet during night, feel fear and anxiety in visiting the doctor or dentist, interested in gaining the health-related information from other resources and agreed that gaining health related information has increased after COVID-19 pandemic (p˂0.05). Cyberchondria is a growing issue with regard to mental health in developing countries and has the ability to cause anxiety and distress. Appropriate actions must be taken to prevent it on a societal level.