Appendices of the work "On the perceived relevance of critical internal quality attributes when evolving software features"
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Context: Several refactorings performed while evolving software features aim to improve internal quality attributes like cohesion and complexity. Studies shows that non-assisted refactorings might worsen, not improve, internal attributes. Current knowledge is scarce on how developers perceive the relevance of critical internal attributes while evolving features. Internal attributes are critical if their measurement assumes anomalous values. Objective: This qualitative study aims at revealing the developer's perception on the relevance of critical internal attributes when evolving features. We target six class-level critical attributes: low cohesion, high complexity, high coupling, large hierarchy depth, large hierarchy breadth, and large size. Method: We performed two industry case studies based on online focus group sessions. We asked developers to discuss how much (and why) critical attributes are relevant for adding or enhancing features. We assessed the relevance of critical attributes individually and relatively, reasons behind the relevance of each critical attribute, and interrelations of critical attributes. Results: Low cohesion and high complexity were perceived as very relevant because they often make evolving features hard while tracking failures and adding features. The other critical attributes were perceived as less relevant when reusing code or adopting design patterns, for instance. Examples of interrelations include large size leads to low cohesion and high complexity leads to high coupling. Conclusions: Our findings could be combined with previous results on how refactorings affect quality attributes to assist developers in applying refactorings that may have a practically relevant impact on critical attributes.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.031 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.006 | 0.006 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.369 | 0.118 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".