Satisfying Programmers' Information Needs in API-Based Programming

Programmers encounter many difficulties in using an API to solve a programming task. To cope with these difficulties, they browse the Internet for code samples, tutorials, and API documentation. In general, it is time-consuming to find relevant help from the plethora of information on the web. While programmers can use search-based tools to help locate code snippets or applications that may be relevant to the APIs they are using, they still face the significant challenge of understanding and assessing the quality of the search results. We propose to investigate a proactive help system that is integrated in a development environment to provide contextual suggestions to the programmers as the code is being read and edited in the editor.