How and When to Transfer Software Engineering Research via Extensions

It is often reported that there is a large gap between software engineering research and practice, with little transfer from research to practice. While this is true in general, one transfer technique is increasingly breaking down this barrier: extensions to integrated development environments (IDEs). With the proliferation of app stores for IDEs and increasing transfer effort from researchers several research-based extensions have seen significant adoption. In this talk we´ll discuss our experience transferring code search research, which currently is in the top 5% of Visual Studio extensions with over 13,000 downloads, as well as other research techniques transferred via extensions such as NCrunch, FindBugs, Code Recommenders, Mylyn, and Instasearch. We´ll use the lessons learned from our transfer experience to provide case study evidence as to best practices for successful transfer, supplementing it with the quantitative evidence offered by app store and usage data across the broader set of extensions. The goal of this 30 minute talk is to provide researchers with a realistic view on which research techniques can be transferred to practice as well as concrete steps to execute such a transfer.