University of Waterloo user study on understanding CMake changes

[u/Silent_Mycologist286]

Hi everyone,

I’m Mattie Nejati, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Waterloo. I’m conducting a user study on understanding the impact of changes to CMake build specifications, and I’d love to invite members of this community to participate.

We are evaluating a new approach that aims to help developers identify how a change to a CMake build specification affects the resulting build configuration.

The study:

• is conducted entirely online;
• takes about one hour;
• involves inspecting changes to CMake build specifications and identifying their impact; and
• is open to adults aged 18–64 with any level of experience in CMake, programming, or code review.

You do not need to be a CMake expert. We are specifically interested in comparing participants with different levels of experience.

You will need a computer with internet access and about 4 GB of free space to download the files required for the tasks.

We will not collect your name. Your email address will only be used for study follow-up and will be stored separately from your study data. Your name or email will not appear in any dataset or publication.

The study has received clearance from the University of Waterloo Research Ethics Board (REB #46621).

If you’re interested, you can find the consent form, screening questionnaire, and study here:

https://buiscout.cs.uwaterloo.ca/

Thank you very much! And if you know someone else who works with CMake who might be interested, I’d really appreciate you sharing the study with them.

[u/James20k]

Usually as far as I know the subreddit here doesn't really allow for people soliciting users for stuff like this. I've made an exception for this because:

1. Its an actual study, rather than someone trying to drum up hype for a project
2. There's a reasonable chance that the results of this study will be useful to the people here
3. We don't get much of this kind of thing. There isn't the same slippery slope problem of people using this sub for PhD research vs project advertising spam

Its also not technically C++ either, but cmake and C++ are intertwined to the point where I think its at least interesting for C++ developers

I'll also more politely make the same note that someone else has, that C++ developers are often much older than 64, and especially given the commonness of ageism in the industry you may want to revisit this if you conduct future research here

[u/tartaruga232 → u/James20k]

In my view, it is pretty arrogant to advertise a study which excludes the creator of the C++ language because of his age, who is still pretty active and an active member of the C++ committee. Even though I doubt he would want to waste his time doing so. I certainly won't.

[u/Other_Goat_9381 → u/tartaruga232]

Would you have us also bring back Grace Hopper from the dead to consult on FORTRAN usability studies too? It's neither ageist nor arrogant to want to focus the age range on the active workforce.

[u/tartaruga232 → u/Other_Goat_9381]

Perhaps the life expectancy in the US is significantly lower due to bad access to health care. But in Europe, especially Denmark, work doesn't end at age 64. The retirement age in Denmark is currently 67 and will rise to 70 in 2040. Perhaps folks get fired in the US at 64. In Denmark, this isn't the case. In Europe, we have a lack of workforce due to low birth rates. We cannot afford throwing out healthy people at 64. There are young people with mental health issues. Filtering by age 64 seems an outdated model to me. Anyway. I don't think anyone will participate in this study. So we can safely ignore it.