Immersive IDE: Towards Leveraging Virtual Reality for creating an Immersive Software Development Environment

Positive affects have been shown to be positively correlated with developer productivity. Moreover, the environment in which the developer sits is important as it has a direct bearing on her emotions. However, in typical software development project setups, it is difficult to mold the surroundings of a developer according to her own needs or wishes. Moreover, large project areas may tend to have multiple distractions that may further negatively affect the developer. Multiple studies have shown that Virtual Reality can be an effective medium to induce positive emotions, with the capability to immerse oneself into virtually created environs, allowing for countless opportunities to surround a developer with what she would want. In this paper, we present our approach to allow a developer to choose her own surrounding environment to work in (say a beach, a park or in space!), while allowing for a real-time feed of her workstation/tools to be embedded in the same for a seamless experience. We believe that this approach will enable better mood/engagement and lower distractions/stress, which may lead to higher productivity and a balanced sense of developer well-being.