Article

How a good software practice thwarts collaboration: the multiple roles of APIs in software development

Authors:

Cleidson R. B. de Souza,

David Redmiles,

David Millen, and

John PattersonAuthors Info & Claims

SIGSOFT '04/FSE-12: Proceedings of the 12th ACM SIGSOFT twelfth international symposium on Foundations of software engineering

October 2004

Pages 221 - 230

https://doi.org/10.1145/1029894.1029925

Published: 31 October 2004 Publication History

Abstract

The principle of information hiding has been very influential in software engineering since its inception in 1972. This principle prescribes that software modules hide implementation details from other modules in order to decrease their interdependencies. This separation also decreases the dependency among software developers implementing modules, thus simplifying some aspects of collaboration. A common instantiation of this principle is in the form of application programming interfaces (APIs). We performed a qualitative study on how practitioners use APIs in their daily work. Although particularly interested in aspects of collaboration, we report all findings about their observed use. The findings include mundane observations that are predicted by theory, ways that APIs support collaborative software development. But the findings also include some surprises, ways that APIs hinder collaboration. The surprises indicate directions for further improvement of collaborative software development practices and tools.

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Cited By

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How a good software practice thwarts collaboration: the multiple roles of APIs in software development

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Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

SIGSOFT '04/FSE-12: Proceedings of the 12th ACM SIGSOFT twelfth international symposium on Foundations of software engineering

October 2004

282 pages

ISBN:1581138555

DOI:10.1145/1029894

General Chair:
Richard N. Taylor
University of California, Irvine, CA
,
Program Chair:
Matthew B. Dwyer
University of Nebraska - Lincoln

ACM SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes Volume 29, Issue 6
November 2004
275 pages
ISSN:0163-5948
DOI:10.1145/1041685
Issue’s Table of Contents

Copyright © 2004 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Published: 31 October 2004

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SIGSOFT04/FSE-12: SIGSOFT 2004 -12th International Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering

October 31 - November 6, 2004

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https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1002/smr.2435
van der Vlist FHelmond ABurkhardt MSeitz T(2022)API Governance: The Case of Facebook’s EvolutionSocial Media + Society10.1177/205630512210862288:2(205630512210862)Online publication date: 7-May-2022
https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051221086228
Muller MStrohmayer A(2022)Forgetting Practices in the Data SciencesProceedings of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3491102.3517644(1-19)Online publication date: 29-Apr-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3491102.3517644
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https://doi.org/10.1109/TSE.2020.2988396
Joblin MMauerer WApel SSiegmund JRiehle DBertolino ACanfora GElbaum S(2015)From developer networks to verified communitiesProceedings of the 37th International Conference on Software Engineering - Volume 110.5555/2818754.2818824(563-573)Online publication date: 16-May-2015
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Matthiesen SBjørn PCosley DForte ACiolfi LMcDonald D(2015)Why Replacing Legacy Systems Is So Hard in Global Software DevelopmentProceedings of the 18th ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing10.1145/2675133.2675232(876-890)Online publication date: 28-Feb-2015
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Joblin MMauerer WApel SSiegmund JRiehle D(2015)From Developer Networks to Verified Communities: A Fine-Grained Approach2015 IEEE/ACM 37th IEEE International Conference on Software Engineering10.1109/ICSE.2015.73(563-573)Online publication date: May-2015
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Wickramaarachchi DLai R(2014)Software modularization in global software development2014 International Conference on Data and Software Engineering (ICODSE)10.1109/ICODSE.2014.7062705(1-6)Online publication date: Nov-2014
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Bahrami MBahrami M(2012)A Review of Software Architecture for Collaborative Software’sAdvanced Materials Research10.4028/www.scientific.net/AMR.433-440.2372433-440(2372-2376)Online publication date: Jan-2012
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