Resumen:
Today practitioners have a myriad of methods from which to choose for the development of software applications. However they lack empirical data that characterize these methods in terms of usefulness, ease of use or compatibility, all of them relevant variables to assess the developer’s intention to use them. In this context, we propose to compare three methods, each following a different paradigm (Model-Driven, Model-Based and the traditional, code-centric, respectively) with respect to its intention to use by junior software developers while developing the business layer of a Web 2.0 application. To do that, we have conducted an experiment with graduate students of the University of Alicante. The application developed was a Social Network, which was organized in three different modules. Subjects were asked to use a different method for each one of the three modules, and then answer a questionnaire that gathered their perceptions during its use. The results show that the method that followed the Model-Driven development paradigm is regarded as the most useful, although it is also regarded as the more difficult to use. They also show that junior software developers feel comfortable with the use of models, and are likely to use them if accompanied by a model-driven development environment.