The problem of conceptualization in god class detection: agreement, strategies and decision drivers

Abstract

The concept of code smells is widespread in Software Engineering. Despite the empirical studies addressing the topic, the set of context-dependent issues that impacts the human perception of what is a code smell has not been studied in depth. We call this the code smell conceptualization problem. To discuss the problem, empirical studies are necessary. In this work, we focused on conceptualization of god class. God class is a code smell characterized by classes that tend to centralize the intelligence of the system. It is one of the most studied smells in software engineering literature.