{"id":118513,"date":"2019-01-04T12:05:25","date_gmt":"2019-01-04T12:05:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/livablesoftware.com\/?p=118513"},"modified":"2020-06-06T11:02:57","modified_gmt":"2020-06-06T11:02:57","slug":"best-bots-software-development","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/livablesoftware.com\/best-bots-software-development\/","title":{"rendered":"Best bots to improve your software development process"},"content":{"rendered":"

There is no doubt that Artificial Intelligence is going to change the way we develop software. Some go as far as saying that AI will replace software development: software will be\u00a0written in neural network weights with no human involvement<\/a>. I don’t know about that, but I’m sure that we will see a progressive cognification<\/a> of software engineering.<\/p>\n

Cognification is the application of knowledge to boost the performance and impact of a process – Kevin Kelly<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In fact, we are already seeing that with the new family of smart programming IDEs<\/a> (not so smart right now, even though they are progressing very quickly). But, to me, the most exciting and promising field to improve software development nowadays involves\u00a0the use of software bots to assist developers in all phases of the development process<\/strong>. Indeed, I believe bots can be especially useful after the first version of the software has been released. Bots (including chatbots) could be very helpful in managing the community around the project (e.g. this chatbot to file bug reports<\/a>), helping in triaging the issues, assisting potential contributors, automatically improving the code,…<\/p>\n

There is plenty of research to be done in this area (full details on my ideas on the use of bots to sustain open source projects here<\/a>) but we already have a number of bots you can use right away to get an extra pair of “hands” in your next project. And, sure, we call now bot<\/em> to things that a couple of years ago we would have called component<\/em>\u00a0or service<\/em>\u00a0so there is also some marketing hidden in this bot list (saying that whatever you’re selling is AI-enhanced gives you plenty of extra points) with many of the bots being rather “stupid” (or, to be more politically correct, simple) bots, instead of the autonomous<\/em>, cooperative<\/em> and learning<\/em> type as typically expected in the field of intelligent \/ autonomous agents where this concept originated.<\/p>\n

Bots are highly popular in other platforms (e.g. see this story about the evolution of Wikipedia bots<\/a>) so let’s bring them on to code hosting platforms as well. Without further due, let’s see my list of bots for software development (missing your favorite one in the list below? please leave a comment).<\/p>\n

Bots for onboarding<\/h2>\n

To ensure the long-term sustainability of your open source project is vital that you’re able to attract new contributors (all kinds of contributors, not only code contributors) and make sure they first encounter with your project ends up in a high note. Otherwise, you’ll be losing them forever.<\/p>\n

First timers<\/a>\u00a0is a friendly bot that helps onboarding new Open Source Contributors, mainly by creating what they call starter issues,<\/a>\u00a0which are simple issues that newcomers could take care of with no previous experience (and feel good about it!). BehaviorBot\u00a0<\/a>comprises a number of bots to welcome new users when they open their first issue, pull request or merge.<\/p>\n

\"Welcome<\/a><\/p>\n

Git Enforcer<\/a> goes one step further and aims to teach new users \/ contributors on how they should frame their issues or pull requests to make sure they comply with the project guidelines. Project owners can define a number of rules all issues and pull requests should satisfy (regarding the names of the issues, the use of labels, its assignment,…) and Git Enforcer will police any new submission and flag the ones that violate them.<\/p>\n

\"Bot<\/p>\n

Our own GitHub Bot<\/a> goes one step further and offers a chat-based interface to create bug reports directly from Slack or other messaging platforms.<\/p>\n

Bots that fix your typos<\/h2>\n

Orthographic pedant\u00a0<\/a>corrects common typos in GitHub one pull request at a time. Typot<\/a> checks the typos and offers a set of alternative fixes you could choose from.\u00a0\u00a0Sedy\u00a0<\/a>brings the power of the Linux\u00a0sed<\/code>\u00a0command to Github comments to fix typos and in general any kind of string replacement.<\/p>\n

Bots for issue and pull requests management<\/h2>\n

Projects must take care of their community. This means managing well the pending issues (and related comments) and pull requests so that visitors don’t get the feeling the project is not interested in their contributions. If you don’t have the time to manage your community, these bots will do it for you:<\/p>\n