Assessing the impact of bad smells using historical information

ABSTRACT

Our aim is to gain a better understanding of the relationship between bad smells and design principle violations, in order to better identify the root causes of a given set of bad smells and target refactoring efforts more effectively. In particular, knowing which bad smells point to important design problems would help to focus developers' efforts. In this position paper we argue that such knowledge requires the empirical study of the evolution of software systems: on the one hand because design problems and their symptoms take time to develop, on the other hand because we need to relate maintenance activity to bad smells to measure their relative importance. We illustrate how existing studies of the evolution of a particular kind of bad smell, code clones, have led to further insights into the harmfulness of cloning.

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INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  D. Software
  D.3 PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES
      D.3.3 Language Constructs and Features

General Terms:
Experimentation, Measurement

Keywords:
bad smells, design defects, design flaws, empirical study, software evolution, software maintenance, software quality, source cede