On the similarity of software development documentation

Abstract

Software developers spent 20% of their time on information seeking on Stack Overflow, YouTube or an API reference documentation. Software developers can search within Stack Overflow for duplicates or similar posts. They can also take a look on software development documentations that have similar and additional information included as a Stack Overflow post or a development screencast in order to get new inspirations on how to solve their current development problem. The linkage of same and different types of software development documentation might safe time to evolve new software solutions and might increase the productivity of the developer’s work day. In this paper we will discuss our approach to get a broader understanding of different similarity types (exact, similar and maybe) within and between software documentation as well as an understanding of how different software documentations can be extended.