Learning to Use a Software Library through User-Selected Examples

Once a software library has been selected for a project, there is still the substantial problem of training developers to use it. This process is complicated by the fact that using a software library often requires some understanding of its fundamental components, their relationships, and various interactions between them. This is particularly true with frameworks which tend to impose a structure on the application. In this paper, we present a tool-based approach that demonstrates reuse of the software library through userselected example applications. In this way, a developer can learn about fundamental library components and their relationships. An important aspect of our approach is that it requires no extra effort on the part of the library developer and can be used with any existing software library. Our approach facilitates learning to use a library by: (1) guiding the developer towards important components of general utility; (2) guiding the developer towards components particularly useful for a specific class of applications; and (3) providing access to the relevant source code in each example for further inspection. Our approach is supported by CodeWeb, a reuse tool we have built for C, C++, and Java libraries.