Understanding Real-Time Collaborative Programming: A Study of Visual Studio Live Share

Real-time collaborative programming (RCP) entails developers working simultaneously, regardless of their geographic locations. RCP differs from traditional asynchronous online programming methods, such as Git or SVN, where developers work independently and update the codebase at separate times. Although various real-time code collaboration tools (e.g., Visual Studio Live Share, Code with Me, and Replit) have kept emerging in recent years, none of the existing studies explicitly focus on a deep understanding of the processes or experiences associated with RCP. To this end, we combine interviews and an e-mail survey with the users of Visual Studio Live Share, aiming to understand (i) the scenarios, (ii) the requirements, and (iii) the challenges when developers participate in RCP. We find that developers participate in RCP in 18 different scenarios belonging to six categories, e.g., pair programming, group debugging, and code review. However, existing users' attitudes toward the usefulness of the current RCP tools in these scenarios were significantly more negative than the expectations of potential users. As for the requirements, the most critical category is live editing, followed by the need for sharing terminals to enable hosts and guests to run commands and see the results, as well as focusing and following, which involves "following" the host's edit location and "focusing" the guests' attention on the host with a notification. Under these categories, we identify 17 requirements, but most of them are not well supported by current tools. In terms of challenges, we identify 19 challenges belonging to seven categories. The most severe category of challenges is lagging followed by permissions and conflicts. The above findings indicate that the current RCP tools and even collaborative environment need to be improved greatly and urgently. Based on these findings, we discuss the recommendations for different stakeholders, including practitioners, tool designers, and researchers.