Software Informatics?

The paper proposes the term 'software informatics' to describe research on the individual, collaborative, and social aspects of software production and use, spanning multiple representations of software from design, to source code, to application. It does this with a particular focus on information processes around software development. As more applications are web-based or available online for download and increasing amounts of source code is also available online, the information processes surrounding software are changing the way that software is created, appropriated and redesigned. Traditional distinctions between software developer and end-user are blurring, with software development processes occurring along a continuum of the proportion of original code written to develop the application, from build from scratch, through library and API calls, copy-paste programming, web mashup development, end-user programming, to creative design through the selection and combination of existing applications. All these design activities have much in common and can benefit from being studied as a whole.