Lessons for Interactive Theorem Proving Researchers from a Survey of Coq Users

  • Ana de Almeida Borges
  • , Annalí Casanueva Artís
  • , Jean Rémy Falleri
  • , Emilio Jesús Gallego Arias
  • , Érik Martin-Dorel
  • , Karl Palmskog
  • , Alexander Serebrenik
  • , Théo Zimmermann

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

The Coq Community Survey 2022 was an online public survey of users of the Coq proof assistant conducted during February 2022. Broadly, the survey asked about use of Coq features, user interfaces, libraries, plugins, and tools, views on renaming Coq and Coq improvements, and also demographic data such as education and experience with Coq and other proof assistants and programming languages. The survey received 466 submitted responses, making it the largest survey of users of an interactive theorem prover (ITP) so far. We present the design of the survey, a summary of key results, and analysis of answers relevant to ITP technology development and usage. In particular, we analyze user characteristics associated with adoption of tools and libraries and make comparisons to adjacent software communities. Notably, we find that experience has significant impact on Coq user behavior, including on usage of tools, libraries, and integrated development environments (IDEs).

Original languageEnglish
Article number8
JournalJournal of Automated Reasoning
Volume69
Issue number1
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Mar 2025

Keywords

  • Community
  • Coq
  • Statistical analysis
  • Survey

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