App-Directed Learning: An Exploratory Study

Learning a new platform is a common, yet difficult task for software developers today. A range of resources, both official resources (i.e., those provided by the platform owner) and those provided by the wider developer community are available to help developers. To increase our understanding of the learning process and the resources developers use, we conducted an interview and diary study in which ten developers told us about their experience learning to develop Windows Phone applications. We report on a preliminary analysis of our data viewed through the lens of self-directed learning. Using this lens, we characterize the learning strategies of our subjects as app-directed, and describe some of the particular challenges our subjects faced due to this strategy.