Context in Programming: An Investigation of How Programmers Create Context

A programming context can be defined as all the relevant information that a developer needs to complete a task. Context comprises information from different sources and programmers interpret the same information differently based on their programming goal. In fact, the same artifact may create a different context when revisited. Context, therefore, by its very nature is a "slippery notion." To understand how people create context we observed six programmers engaged in exploratory programming and performed a qualitative analysis of their activities. We observe that the interactions with artifacts and a mapping of meaning from those artifacts for a programming activity determines how one creates context.