Do Research and Practice of Code Smell Identification Walk Together? A Social Representations Analysis

Mello, Rafael de; Uchôa, Anderson; Oliveira, Roberto; Oizumi, Willian; Souza, Jairo Francisco de; Mendes, Kleyson; Oliveira, Daniel; Fonseca, Baldoíno; Garcia, Alessandro

doi:10.1109/esem.2019.8870141

Cited by 9 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…The theory of social representations has been applied to support research in diverse fields, including health [9], social development [10], education [8], and psychology [3]. Recent works have applied the theory of social representations in the context of Software Engineering, in particular, using code smells [5,6] and confusing code [7] as social objects. In this study, our social object is the concept of Harmful Code.…”

Section: Theory Of Social Representationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…After calculating the frequencies, it is recommended to discard the associations made by less than 2% of the subjects [14]. When the samples are composed of less than 100 subjects, we may discard the associations with frequency=1 to reduce noise in the subsequent analyses [6]. Then, all of the remaining associations are distributed among the four zones (or quadrants) of the social representations 1 to identify the strongest and the weakest associations made by developers.…”

Section: Theory Of Social Representationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The first experiences with the theory of social representations in software engineering are recent [5][6][7]. However, this theory has been successfully used in different research fields [3,[8][9][10].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Investigating the Social Representations of Harmful Code

Lima

Souza

Fonseca

et al. 2023

Preprint

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Context. Harmful Code are code elements that harm the software. Several characteristics can cause a code be Harmful to the Software. That may result from plenty of characteristics of the source code and external issues. By example, one might associate Harmful Code with the introduction of bugs, architecture degradation, and hard comprehension. However, there is still a lack of knowledge on which are the code issues that are considered harmful from the perspective of the community of software developers. Goal. In this work, we investigate the social representations of Harmful Code among a community of software developers composed of Brazilian postgraduate students and professionals from the industry. Method. We conducted free association tasks with members from this community for characterizing what comes to their minds when they think about Harmful Code. Then, we compiled a set of associations that compose the social representations of Harmful Code. Results. We found that the investigated community strongly associates Harmful Code with a core set of undesirable characteristics of the source code, such as bugs and different types of smells. Based on these findings, we discussed each of them to try to understand why those characteristics happen. Conclusion. Our study reveals the main characteristics of Harmful Code by a community of developers, those characteristics can guide researchers on future works to better understand Harmful Code.

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Section: Theory Of Social Representationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Theory Of Social Representationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Investigating the Social Representations of Harmful Code

Lima

Souza

Fonseca

et al. 2023

Preprint

Self Cite

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“…Developers should manually validate candidates to code smells reported by detection tools, avoiding wasting effort on modifying several code elements due to false positives. Besides, this waste of effort may lead developers to accidentally introduce new and even worse issues in the source code [2].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Validating the incidence of code smells is a considerably subjective task. The developer's decision about their incidence may be highly influenced by contextual factors, including technological, organizational, and human ones [3] [2]. Consequently, the subjectivity of the task frequently leads developers to disagree on their interpretations about the incidence of code smells [6].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Revealing Developers’ Arguments on Validating the Incidence of Code Smells: A Focus Group Experience

Junionello¹,

Mello²,

Oliveira³

et al. 2021

Anais Do IX Workshop De Visualização, Evolução E Manutenção De Software (VEM 2021)

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Identifying code smells is considered a subjective task. Unfortunately, current automated detection tools cannot deal with such subjectivity, requiring human validation. Developers tend to follow different, albeit complementary, strategies when validating the identified smells. Intending to find out developers' arguments when validating the incidence of code smells, we conducted a focus group session with developers familiar with identifying code smells. We distributed them among two groups, in which they had to argue about the incidence of a code smell: either accepting or rejecting its presence. Based on their arguments, we compiled a set of general heuristics that developers follow when validating smells. We then used these heuristics for composing validation items. We understand that the set of validation items proposed may support developers in reflecting on the incidence of code smells. However, further studies are needed for reaching a more comprehensive and optimized set. The experience of this study reveals that conducting focus group sessions is helpful to emerge the tacit knowledge of developers when validating code smells.

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