Selecting third-party libraries: the web developers’ perspective

Abstract

The web developers use third-party libraries to enhance the performance and effectiveness of the web development process. These third-party libraries make a developer’s job more efficient by minimizing the need for writing code for complex functions. There may be different libraries to perform each task or function and may have a significant impact on the project's timeliness and success, therefore library selection is very crucial. There are many factors that influence library selection, that’s why it might be challenging for a web developer to choose the best library to utilize. Researchers had found out the factors that data scientists and software developers consider when selecting a third-party library. This research determines the factors that web developers consider while selecting a library by conducting a survey of web developers using the same 26 library selection factors (used for software developers’ and data scientists’ community). This work highlights the top ranked library selection factors based on the ratings by web developers. Our survey results also identify new elements or factors that influence web developers' choice of libraries. This research also compares the top ranked library selection factors highlighted by web developers with the ones identified by software developers and data scientists. It also discusses the factors that these two communities and web developers score differently. This study finds out that web developers rated 16 factors differently from software developers and there are 12 factors that web developers rated differently from data scientists.