Developer Satisfaction Survey/2023/Quality

πŸ“–Β Developer Satisfaction 2023

The developer satisfaction survey is an annual survey of the Wikimedia developer community.

πŸ†Β Quality

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41%

41% of all comments we coded as negative mentioned at least 1 of 3 things:

  • Documentation
  • Lack of stewardship
  • Prioritizing new features over maintenance

πŸ”— Perception of technical debt

πŸ’¬ It often seems like we would rather build the next big new thing by declaring some software to be too ridden by technical debt to work with.

We asked survey takers, β€œConsidering the software projects you’ve contributed to in your role as a member of the Wikimedia Developer Community this past year: What is your perception of the current level of technical debt?”

  • The majority (69%) of respondents perceived the technical debt level as high
  • 20% perceived the level as neither high nor low
  • 6% perceived the level as low
  • 5% were unsure

πŸ”— Effects of technical debt on productivity

πŸ’¬ Lack of maintenance of critical code in Wikimedia is hurting and will continue to hurt everyone. This needs to change.

We asked survey takers, β€œIn the past year, how has technical debt affected your productivity as a member of the Wikimedia Developer Community?”

  • The majority of respondents (83%) said technical debt affected their productivity
  • 14% were unsure
  • 3% said it had no effect on their productivity

πŸ”— Perception of code quality: first-party code

We asked survey takers, β€œHow would you rate the quality of the code you maintain in your role as a member of the Wikimedia Developer Community?”

  • The majority of respondents (51%) rated the quality of code they maintain as high quality
  • 27% rated the quality as neither high nor low quality
  • 15% were unsure
  • 7% rated the quality as low

πŸ”— Perception of code quality: third-party code

We asked survey takers, β€œHow would you rate the quality of third-party code (libraries, language ecosystems) that you depend on in your role as a member of the Wikimedia Developer Community?”

  • 42% of respondents rated the quality of third-party code as high quality
  • 25% were unsure
  • 22% rated the quality as neither high nor low
  • 11% rated the quality as low

πŸ”— Effects of code quality on productivity

We asked participants, β€œIn the past year, how has code quality affected your productivity as a member of the Wikimedia Developer Community?”

  • The majority of respondents (73%) said code quality affected their productivity
  • 17% were unsure
  • 10% said it had no effect on their productivity

πŸ”— Puzzles in this section

A few respondents raised challenges or problems with this section.

A meta note about technical debt:

πŸ’¬ It's very hard to define unambiguously "technical debt".

And problems we should address in future iterations of the survey:

πŸ’¬ I feel these questions are too vague to give a coherent answer to. Things vary so considerably between projects.

πŸ’¬ I said technical debt affected my work in a major way, because the major portion of my work for several months of this year has been retiring technical debt.