An Empirical Study on the Impact of Code Contributor on Code Smell

Abstract

Code smells refer to poor designs that are considered to have negative impacts on the readability and maintainability during software evolution. Much research has been conducted to study the effects and correlations between them. However, software is a product of human intelligence, and the fundamental cause of code smell is developers. As a result, the research on the impact of code contributors on code smell appears vital in particular. In this paper, on 8 popular Java projects with 994 versions, we investigate the impact on code smells from the novel perspective of code contributors on five features. The empirical study indicated that the greater number of contributors involved, the more likely it is to introduce code smell. Having more mature contributors, who participate in more versions, can avoid the introduction of code smell. These findings are helpful for developers to optimize team structure and improve the quality of products.