An Empirical Study of Developer Discussions on Low-Code Software Development Challenges
An Empirical Study of Developer Discussions on Low-Code Software Development Challenges Md Abdullah Al Alamin∗, Sanjay Malakary, Gias Uddin∗, Sadia Afrozy, Tameem Bin Haidery, Anindya Iqbaly ∗University of Calgary, yBangladesh University of Engineering and Technology Abstract—Low-code software development (LCSD) is an of low-code development is gaining popularity at a rapid pace. emerging paradigm that combines minimal source code with According to Forrester report [47], the LCSD platform market interactive graphical interfaces to promote rapid application is expected to be $21 Billon by 2022. According to Gartner development. LCSD aims to democratize application development to software practitioners with diverse backgrounds. Given that report, by 2024, around 65% of large enterprises will use LCSD is relatively a new paradigm, it is vital to learn about LCSD platforms to some extent [61]. the challenges developers face during their adoption of LCSD To date, there are more than 200 LCSD platforms, offered platforms. The online developer forum, Stack Overflow (SO), by almost all major companies like Google [21] and Sales- is popular among software developers to ask for solutions to their technical problems. We observe a growing body of posts force [49]. Naturally, LCSD has some unique challenges [48]. in SO with discussions of LCSD platforms. In this paper, we Wrong choice of LCSD application/platforms may cause a present an empirical study of around 5K SO posts (questions waste of time and resources. There is also concern about the + accepted answers) that contain discussions of nine popular security/scalability of LCSD applications [26]. With interests LCSD platforms. We apply topic modeling on the posts to in LCSD growing, we observe discussions about LCSD plat- determine the types of topics discussed.
[Show full text]