The rise and fall of the social software engineer

Abstract

Over the past few decades, software development has transitioned from a predominantly solo activity where developers create small stand alone programs, to a widespread distributed activity where hundreds and even thousands of developers operate within an online participatory community of practice to create complex software ecosystems. This large scale distributed development effort has been made possible by innovations that include the Internet, the World Wide Web, sophisticated development tools and agents, and rich communication channels and social media. In this talk, I will first review the rise of the social developer and describe how today’s developers learn from and contribute to this network of knowledge. The vast online resources that developers have created, often implicitly, are now being used to fuel the next wave of artificial agents, that are already showing major disruptions in how developers individually and together create software. I will conclude this presentation with a guided discussion around how these changes may impact software development practices in the near and distant future.

Short Biography

Dr. Margaret-Anne Storey is a Professor of Computer Science at the University of Victoria and a Canada Research Chair (Tier 1) in Human and Social Aspects of Software Engineering. Her research provides new theories and insights about how software tools, communication media, and data visualizations can improve how software engineers and knowledge workers explore, understand, analyze, and share complex information and knowledge. In turn, these theories have transformed critical engineering systems and tools developed and used by industry practitioners, non-profit partners and research scientists. Dr. Storey regularly consults with global software companies, most recently, Microsoft and getDX, to ensure real-world applicability of her research contributions and tools. She is also a driving force behind diversity in software engineering: in 2016, she was awarded the Lise Meitner Guest Professorship at Lund University to mentor women in science and engineering; in 2023, she holds the Verena Myer Visiting Professorship at University of Zurich to promote diversity.

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