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Leveraging usage similarity for effective retrieval of examples in code repositories
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IDE 2.0: collective intelligence in software development
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Measuring API documentation on the web
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Flow-augmented call graph: a new foundation for taming API complexity
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Assessing modularity via usage changes
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A field study of API learning obstacles
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Facing up to the inequality of crowdsourced API documentation
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Synthesizing API usage examples
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Automatic parameter recommendation for practical API usage
Proceedings of the 34th International Conference on Software Engineering
Facilitating code example search on the web through expertise personalization
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Development and application of a heuristic to assess trends in API documentation
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Detecting API usage obstacles: a study of iOS and Android developer questions
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Mining succinct and high-coverage API usage patterns from source code
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Extensibility in ecosystem architectures: an initial study
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Most software projects reuse components exposed through APIs, which provide developers access to implemented functionality. APIs have grown large and diverse, which raises questions regarding their usability. This article reports on a study of the obstacles professional developers at Microsoft faced when learning how to use APIs. The study was grounded in developers' experience, collected through a survey and interviews. The resulting data showed that learning resources for APIs are critically important and shed light on three issues: the need to discover the design and rationale of the API when needed, the challenge of finding credible usage API examples at the right level of complexity, and the challenge of understanding inexplicable API behavior. The article describes each of these challenges in detail and discusses associated implications for API users and designers.