Software development with real-time collaborative editing

This thesis presents Collabode, a web-based integrated development environment for Java. With real-time collaborative editing, multiple programmers can use Collabode to edit the same source code at the same time. Collabode introduces error-mediated integration, where multiple editors see the text of one another's changes while being isolated from errors and in-progress work, and error-free changes are integrated automatically. Three models of collaborative programming are presented and evaluated using Collabode. Classroom programming brings zero-setup web-based programming to computer science students working in a classroom or lab. Test-driven pair programming combines two existing software development strategies to create a model with clear roles and explicit tool support. And micro-outsourcing enables one programmer to easily request and integrate very small contributions from many distributed assistants, demonstrating how a system for highly-collaborative programming enables a development model infeasible with current tools. To show that highly-collaborative programming, using real-time collaborative editing of source code, is practical, useful, and enables new models of software development, this thesis presents a series of user studies. A study with pairs of both student and professional programmers shows that error-mediated integration allows them to work productively in parallel. In a semester-long deployment of Collabode, students in an MIT software engineering course used the system for classroom programming. In a lab study of a Collabode prototype, professional programmers used test-driven pair programming. Finally, a study involving both in-lab participants and contractors hired online demonstrated how micro-outsourcing allowed participants to approach programming in a new way, one enabled by collaborative editing, automatic error-mediated integration, and a web-based environment requiring no local setup.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2012

Author dc:creator

• Goldman, Max, Ph. D. Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Robert C. Miller.

• Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/78447

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/78447