Finding Source Code on the Web for Remix and Reuse

Susan Elliott Sim

In recent years, searching for source code on the web has become increasingly common among professional software developers and is emerging as an area of academic research. This volume surveys past research and presents the state of the art in the area of "code retrieval on the web." This work is concerned with the algorithms, systems, and tools to allow programmers to search for source code on the web and the empirical studies of these inventions and practices. It is a label that we apply to a set of related research from software engineering, information retrieval, human-computer interaction, management, as well as commercial products. The division of code retrieval on the web into snippet remixing and component reuse is driven both by empirical data, and analysis of existing search engines and tools. Contributors include leading researchers from human-computer interaction,...