Code, Camera, Action: How Software Developers Document and Share Program Knowledge Using YouTube

Creating documentation is a challenging task in software engineering and most techniques involve the laborious and sometimes tedious job of writing text. This paper explores an alternative to traditional text-based documentation, the screen-cast, which captures a developer's screen while they narrate how a program or software tool works. We conducted a study to investigate how developers produce and share developer-focused screen casts using the You Tube social platform. First, we identified and analyzed a set of development screen casts to determine how developers have adapted to the medium to meet the demands of development-related documentation needs. We also explored the techniques and strategies used for sharing software knowledge. Second, we interviewed screen cast producers to understand their motivations for creating screen casts, and to uncover the perceived benefits and challenges in producing code-focused videos. Our findings reveal that video is a useful medium for communicating program knowledge between developers, and that developers build their online personas and reputation by sharing videos through social channels.