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In Java, some object attributes are mutable, while others are immutable (with the "final" modifier attached to them). Objects that have at least one mutable attribute may be referred to as "mutable" objects. We suspect that mutable objects…

In object-oriented programming, it is reasonable to hypothesize that smaller classes with fewer methods are less complex. Should this hypothesis hold true, it would be advisable for programmers to design classes with fewer methods, as…

The common use case of code smells assumes causality: Identify a smell, remove it, and by doing so improve the code. We empirically investigate their fitness to this use. We present a list of properties that code smells should have if they…

Code readability and software complexity are important software quality metrics that impact other software metrics such as maintainability, reusability, portability and reliability. This paper presents an empirical study of the…

Nowadays, modern applications are developed using components written in different programming languages. These systems introduce several advantages. However, as the number of languages increases, so does the challenges related to the…

Java remains one of the most popular programming languages in education. Although Java programming education is well supported by study materials, learners also need more immediate support on the problems they face in their own code. When…

While a substantial body of prior research has investigated the form and nature of production code, comparatively little attention has examined characteristics of test code, and, in particular, test smells in that code. In this paper, we…

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…

Exaggeration or context changes can render maintainability experience into prejudice. For example, JavaScript is often seen as least elegant language and hence of lowest maintainability. Such prejudice should not guide decisions without…

Decisions on which classes to refactor are fraught with difficulty. The problem of identifying candidate classes becomes acute when confronted with large systems comprising hundreds or thousands of classes. In this paper, we describe a…

Dependencies between modules can trigger ripple effects when changes are made, making maintenance complex and costly, so minimizing these dependencies is crucial. Consequently, understanding what drives dependencies is important. One…

Proponents of software verification have argued that simpler code is easier to verify: that is, that verification tools issue fewer false positives and require less human intervention when analyzing simpler code. We empirically validate…

We investigated how programmers express high-level concepts such as path names and coordinates using primitive data types. While relying too much on primitive data types is sometimes criticized as a bad smell, it is still a common practice…

Although writing code seems trivial at times, problems arise when humans misinterpret what the code actually does. One of the potential causes are "atoms of confusion", the smallest possible patterns of misinterpretable source code.…

In this paper, we study how object-oriented classes are used across thousands of software packages. We concentrate on "usage diversity'", defined as the different statically observable combinations of methods called on the same object. We…

When programming resource-scarce embedded smart devices, the designer often requires both the low-level system programming features of a language such as C and higher level capability typical of a language like Java. The choice of a…

Fault-proneness is an indication of programming errors that decreases software quality and maintainability. On the contrary, code smell is a symptom of potential design problems which has impact on fault-proneness. In the literature,…

Generics have been added to Java so as to increase the expressiveness of its type system. Generics in Java, however, include some features---such as Java wildcards, $F$-bounded generics, and Java erasure---that have been hard to analyze and…

Software design debt aims to elucidate the rectification attempts of the present design flaws and studies the influence of those to the cost and time of the software. Design smells are a key cause of incurring design debt. Although the…

Bad smells have been defined to describe potential problems in code, possibly pointing out refactoring opportunities. Several empirical studies have highlighted that smells have a negative impact on comprehension and maintainability.…