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An Approach to Automatically Assess Method Names

An approach is presented to automatically assess the quality of method names by providing a score and feedback. The approach implements ten method naming standards to evaluate the names. The naming standards are taken from work that validated the …

Understanding Digits in Identifier Names: An Exploratory Study

Before any software maintenance can occur, developers must read the identifier names found in the code to be maintained. Thus, high-quality identifier names are essential for productive program comprehension and maintenance activities. With …

IDEAL: An Open-Source Identifier Name Appraisal Tool

Developers must comprehend the code they will maintain, meaning that the code must be legible and reasonably self-descriptive. Unfortunately, there is still a lack of research and tooling that supports developers in understanding their naming …

On the Distribution of "Simple Stupid Bugs" in Unit Test Files: An Exploratory Study

A key aspect of ensuring the quality of a software system is the practice of unit testing. Through unit tests, developers verify the correctness of production source code, thereby verifying the system's intended behavior under test. However, unit …

On the Naming of Methods: A Survey of Professional Developers

This paper describes the results of a large (+1100 responses) survey of professional software developers concerning standards for naming source code methods. The various standards for source code method names are derived from and supported in the …

Using Grammar Patterns to Interpret Test Method Name Evolution

It is good practice to name test methods such that they are comprehensible to developers; they must be written in such a way that their purpose and functionality are clear to those who will maintain them. Unfortunately, there is little automated …

TsDetect: An Open Source Test Smells Detection Tool

The test code, just like production source code, is subject to bad design and programming practices, also known as smells. The presence of test smells in a software project may affect the quality, maintainability, and extendability of test suites …

An Exploratory Study on the Refactoring of Unit Test Files in Android Applications

An essential activity of software maintenance is the refactoring of source code. Refactoring operations enable developers to take necessary actions to correct bad programming practices (i.e., smells) in the source code of both production and test …

On the Distribution of Test Smells in Open Source Android Applications: An Exploratory Study

The impact of bad programming practices, such as code smells, in production code has been the focus of numerous studies in software engineering. Like production code, unit tests are also affected by bad programming practices which can have a negative …

An Empirical Study of Abbreviations and Expansions in Software Artifacts

Expanding abbreviations is an important text normalization technique used for the purpose of either increasing developer comprehension or supporting the application of natural-language-based tools for source code identifiers. This paper closely …