Maintaining Mental Models: A Study of Developer Work Habits [pdf]

cs.cmu.edu

6 points·Jasber··4 comments

I'd really like to see code developed with an environment like Etherpad.

Seeing PG write his essay (http://etherpad.com/ep/pad/slider/13sentences) was great, but seeing code being written and getting an insight into the process of development would be even better. I think it'd also be a useful introspection tool to understand your way of working.

I'd tried to record my own development sessions using screen capture, but that just ground my machine to a halt. Does anyone know of any software for recording an Emacs session and playing it back in "real-time" (e.g. I'd like to see where I paused to think vs. a compressed time version).

If you're interested in working on a project like this, drop me a line!

Like most others, I check in code changes with references to the issue tracking system.

To browse those check in comments with diffs, is an abstracted version of what you want. Would the exact keyboard strikes really be a benefit?

(Well, I'd love to see some sessions with real Emacs wizards, personally. But that isn't what you talk about?)

It's not the exact key strikes I'm trying to record, it's more seeing how the shape of the code changes over time (e.g. variable names changing as the problem is understood more fully).

My code commits tend to be when I've reached a milestone (made a test pass for example), but I don't commit enough to understand the thought process that made me write the code that way.

The scribd link either seems to be broken, or there is an error in the site. The pdf link seems to load up fine.

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