Title
Do Research and Practice of Code Smell Identification Walk Together? A Social Representations Analysis
Abstract
Context: It is frequently claimed the need for bridging the gap between software engineering research and practice. In this sense, the theory of social representations may be useful to characterize the actual concerns of software developers. It comprises the system of values, behaviors, and practices of communities regarding a particular social object, such as the task of smell identification. Aim: To characterize the social representations of smell identification by software developers. Method: Based on the answers given to a question-naire, we analyzed the associations made by the developers about smell identification, i.e., what immediately comes to their minds when they think about this task. Results: We found that developers strongly associate smell identification with the practice of smell removal and with the incidence of bugs. They also frequently associate the task with the practice of inspection and with the need of having individual skills. Besides, we verified that the current state of the art on smell identification partially address the social representations of the software developers. Conclusion: There is a considerable gap between the research of smell identification and its practice. We propose directions to mitigating this gap.
Year
DOI
Venue
2019
10.1109/ESEM.2019.8870141
2019 ACM/IEEE International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement (ESEM)
Keywords
Field
DocType
social representations,associations,code smells
Informatics,Systems engineering,Task analysis,Computer science,Software bug,Human–computer interaction,Software,Code smell
Conference
ISSN
ISBN
Citations 
1949-3770
978-1-7281-2969-3
0
PageRank 
References 
Authors
0.34
11
9