Improving JavaScript Development Productivity by Providing Runtime Information within the Code Editor
Alexis Troberg · 2015
Softare development is a laborious and expensive activity that highly benefits from productivity improvements. It has been estimated that developers spend 50-80 % of their time trying to understand code. Previous studies have shown that developer tools can significantly assist developers in code comprehension and thus improve their productivity. Web applications built with JavaScript have become increasingly popular, but developer tools available for web application development are still immature. This is mainly due to the dynamic nature of JavaScript, which makes it unsuitable for conventional development tools that work by statically analysing source code. This thesis presents previous research on developer productivity and JavaScript developer tools. The most important contribution of this thesis is Tracr, a novel JavaScript development tool that enables live editing of code within a code editor. Live editing has been previously found to be an effective technique for improving code comprehension and developer productivity. Tracr’s development workflow and its technical feasibility are evaluated. The