Context:

Software development is a continuous decision-making process that mainly relies on the software engineer’s experience and intuition. One of the essential decisions in the early stages of the process is selecting the best fitting programming language ecosystem based on the project requirements. A significant number of criteria, such as developer availability and consistent documentation, in addition to the number of available options in the market, lead to a challenging decision-making process. As the selection of programming language ecosystems depends on the application to be developed and its environment, a decision model is required to analyze the selection problem using systematic identification and evaluation of potential alternatives for a development project.

Method:

Recently, we introduced a framework to build decision models for technology selection problems in software production. Furthermore, we designed and implemented a decision support system that uses such decision models to support software engineers with their decision-making problems. This study presents a decision model based on the framework for the programming language ecosystem selection problem.

Results:

The decision model has been evaluated through seven real-world case studies at seven software development companies. The case study participants declared that the approach provides significantly more insight into the programming language ecosystem selection process and decreases the decision-making process’s time and cost.

Conclusion:

With the decision model, software engineers can more rapidly evaluate and select programming language ecosystems. Having the knowledge in the decision model readily available supports software engineers in making more efficient and effective decisions that meet their requirements and priorities. Furthermore, such reusable knowledge can be employed by other researchers to develop new concepts and solutions for future challenges.

中文翻译：

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编程语言生态系统选择的决策模型：七个行业案例研究

语境：

软件开发是一个持续的决策过程，主要依赖于软件工程师的经验和直觉。该过程早期阶段的一项重要决策是根据项目要求选择最适合的编程语言生态系统。除了市场上可用的选项数量之外，大量标准（例如开发人员可用性和一致的文档）导致了具有挑战性的决策过程。由于编程语言生态系统的选择取决于要开发的应用程序及其环境，因此需要一个决策模型来使用开发项目潜在替代方案的系统识别和评估来分析选择问题。

方法：

最近，我们引入了一个框架来为软件生产中的技术选择问题构建决策模型。此外，我们设计并实现了一个决策支持系统，该系统使用这样的决策模型来支持软件工程师解决他们的决策问题。本研究提出了一个基于编程语言生态系统选择问题框架的决策模型。

结果：

该决策模型已通过七家软件开发公司的七个真实案例研究进行评估。案例研究参与者表示，该方法显着提供了对编程语言生态系统选择过程的更多洞察，并减少了决策过程的时间和成本。

结论：

借助决策模型，软件工程师可以更快地评估和选择编程语言生态系统。决策模型中的知识随时可用，支持软件工程师做出更高效、更有效的决策，以满足他们的需求和优先级。此外，其他研究人员可以利用这种可重复使用的知识来开发新的概念和解决方案，以应对未来的挑战。