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Architectural smells (AS) are notorious for their long-term impact on the Maintainability and Evolvability of software systems. The majority of research work has investigated this topic by mining software repositories of open source Java…

Code smells are symptoms of potential code quality problems that may affect software maintainability, thus increasing development costs and impacting software reliability. Large language models (LLMs) have shown remarkable capabilities for…

Code smells are symptoms of poor design quality. Since code review is a process that also aims at improving code quality, we investigate whether and how code review influences the severity of code smells. In this study, we analyze more than…

Understanding what drives code instability is essential for effective software maintenance, as unstable classes require larger or more frequent edits and increase the risk of unintended side effects. Although code smells are widely believed…

Context. Code smells, which are recurring anomalies in design or style, have been extensively researched in professional code. However, their significance in block-based projects created by novices is still largely unknown. Block-based…

Angular is one of the most widely adopted frameworks for developing large-scale, dynamic web applications. As projects increase in scope and complexity, developers face growing challenges in managing architecture and maintaining clean,…

Context. The adoption of Machine Learning (ML)--enabled systems is steadily increasing. Nevertheless, there is a shortage of ML-specific quality assurance approaches, possibly because of the limited knowledge of how quality-related concerns…

A code smell is a surface indicator of an inherent problem in the system, most often due to deviation from standard coding practices on the developers part during the development phase. Studies observe that code smells made the code more…

The ubiquity of smartphones, and their very broad capabilities and usage, make the security of these devices tremendously important. Unfortunately, despite all progress in security and privacy mechanisms, vulnerabilities continue to…

Developing test code may be a time-consuming task that usually requires much effort and cost, especially when it is done manually. Besides, during this process, developers and testers are likely to adopt bad design choices, which may lead…

The Large Language Models (LLMs) have demonstrated great potential in code-related tasks. However, most research focuses on improving the output quality of LLMs (e.g., correctness), and less attention has been paid to the LLM input (e.g.,…

Code samples play a pivotal role in open-source ecosystems (OSSECO), serving as lightweight artifacts that support knowledge transfer, onboarding, and framework adoption. Despite their instructional relevance, these samples are often…

In this paper, we present a tertiary systematic literature review of previous surveys, secondary systematic literature reviews, and systematic mappings. We identify the main observations (what we know) and challenges (what we do not know)…

Automated batch refactoring has become a de-facto mechanism to restructure software that may have significant design flaws negatively impacting the code quality and maintainability. Although automated batch refactoring techniques are known…

Dependency management in modern software development poses many challenges for developers who wish to stay up to date with the latest features and fixes whilst ensuring backwards compatibility. Project maintainers have opted for varied, and…

Code smells are indicators of potential design flaws in source code and do not appear alone but in combination with other smells, creating complex interactions. While existing literature classifies these smell interactions into collocated,…

The aims of this paper are: 1) to identify "worst smells", i.e., bad smells that never have a good reason to exist, 2) to determine the frequency, change-proneness, and severity associated with worst smells, and 3) to identify the "worst…

Large Language Models (LLMs) are increasingly integrated into software systems for diverse purposes, due to their versatility, flexibility, and ability to simulate human reasoning to some extent. However, poor integration of LLM inference…

[Background] Web communication is universal in cyberspace, and security risks in this domain are devastating. [Aims] We analyzed the prevalence of six security smells in mobile app servers, and we investigated the consequence of these…

Background: Defect prediction in software can be highly beneficial for development projects, when prediction is highly effective and defect-prone areas are predicted correctly. One of the key elements to gain effective software defect…