Low-code software development (LCSD) is an emerging approach to democratize application development for software practitioners from diverse backgrounds. LCSD platforms promote rapid application development with a drag-and-drop interface and minimal programming by hand. As it is a relatively new paradigm, it is vital to study developers' difficulties when adopting LCSD platforms. Software engineers frequently use the online developer forum Stack Overflow (SO) to seek assistance with technical issues. We observe a growing body of LCSD-related posts in SO. This paper presents an empirical study of around 33K SO posts containing discussions of 38 popular LCSD platforms. We use Topic Modeling to determine the topics discussed in those posts. Additionally, we examine how these topics are spread across the various phases of the agile software development life cycle (SDLC) and which part of LCSD is the most popular and challenging. Our study offers several interesting findings. First, we find 40 LCSD topics that we group into five categories: Application Customization, Database, and File Management, Platform Adoption, Platform Maintenance, and Third-party API Integration. Second, while the Application Customization (30\%) and Data Storage (25\%) \rev{topic} categories are the most common, inquiries relating to several other categories (e.g., the Platform Adoption \rev{topic} category) have gained considerable attention in recent years. Third, all topic categories are evolving rapidly, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic. The findings of this study have implications for all three LCSD stakeholders: LCSD platform vendors, LCSD developers/practitioners, Researchers, and Educators. Researchers and LCSD platform vendors can collaborate to improve different aspects of LCSD, such as better tutorial-based documentation, testing, and DevOps support.
翻译:低码软件开发(LCSD)是使来自不同背景的软件从业者应用开发民主化的一种新兴方法。LCSD平台通过拖放接口和手动最小编程促进快速应用开发,这是一个相对较新的范例,因此在采用LCSD平台时,必须研究开发者的困难。软件工程师经常使用在线开发者论坛Stack Overflow(SO)寻求技术问题的协助。我们看到与LCSD有关的职位越来越多。本文介绍了对大约33KSO(约33K SO)的实证研究,其中载有LCSD平台的38个受欢迎的讨论。我们使用专题模型来确定这些文章中讨论的议题。此外,我们研究这些议题是如何在软件开发周期的灵活阶段(SDLLC)的不同阶段传播的,LCSD平台的一部分是最受欢迎的。我们发现40个LCSDA专题分为五个类别:应用定制、数据库和文件管理、平台采用、平台维护、第三方平台支持。第二,SDSD(30+)和数据存储(25+LTLTF)的三大研究类别,特别是LTLF)研究。在SDSDADAD 中,这三大类。我们发现这些研究中获得了更多的研究。