Selecting Third-Party Libraries: The Web Developers' Perspective

Web developers use third-party libraries to enhance the performance and effectiveness of web development process. There may be different libraries to perform each task, and they have a significant impact on a project's timelines and success; therefore, library selection is crucial. Many factors influence library selection, making it challenging for a web developer to choose the best library to utilize. Researchers have 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 when selecting a library by conducting a survey of web developers using the same 26 factors (used for software developers and data scientists). This work highlights the top-ranked library selection factors based on the ratings by web developers and identifies new factors influencing 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 rate 14 factors differently from software developers and there are 12 factors that web developers rate differently from data scientists.