Novice software developers, all over again
Abstract
Transitions from novice to expert often cause stress and anxiety and require specialized instruction and support to enact efficiently. While many studies have looked at novice computer science students, very little research has been conducted on professional novices. We conducted a two-month in-situ qualitative case study of new software developers in their first six months working at Microsoft. We shadowed them in all aspects of their jobs: coding, debugging, designing, and engaging with their team, and analyzed the types of tasks in which they engage. We can explain many of the behaviors revealed by our analyses if viewed through the lens of newcomer socialization from the field of organizational man-agement. This new perspective also enables us to better understand how current computer science pedagogy prepares students for jobs in the software industry. We consider the implications of this data and analysis for developing new processes for learning in both university and industrial settings to help accelerate the transition from novice to expert software developer.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
Developers' ability to meet information needs contributes to their ability to acquire and build expertise.
“We also know that developers' ability to meet information needs contributes to their ability to acquire and build expertise [5,17].”
From The Evolution of Information Seeking in Software Development: Understanding the Role and Impact of AI Assistants (2025) · cites this paper as [5]
The citation lists haven’t been fetched yet
References 42 · Cited by 266
- Authors
- Begel, A., & Simon, B.
- Affiliations
- Microsoft (United States) (US)
- University of California San Diego (US)
- ORCID
- Begel, Andrew
- Venue
- Proceedings of the Fourth international Workshop on Computing Education Research
- Publisher
- ACM
- Published
- 2008-09-06
- Pages
- 3-14
- OpenAlex
- W2151278638
- Cited by
- 266
- References
- 42
- Citations by year
- 2026: 15 · 2025: 15 · 2024: 12 · 2023: 23 · 2022: 20 · 2021: 12 · 2020: 15 · 2019: 45 · 2018: 14 · 2017: 6 · 2016: 16 · 2015: 16 · 2014: 20 · 2013: 9 · 2012: 5
- FWCI
- 12.57
- Type
- conference paper
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- ACM Conference on International Computing Education Research (ICER) (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Human Factors and Ergonomics › Innovative Education and Learning Practices
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Information Systems › Software Engineering Techniques and Practices
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Computer Science Applications › Teaching and Learning Programming
- Keywords
- novice to expert transition, newcomer socialization, software development careers, debugging, software design, team collaboration, industrial software development, workplace learning
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
