Context:

Code and design smells, such as the coupling smells examined in this article, are widely studied. Existing empirical studies reveal gaps between the scientific theory and practice, not yet explained by the scientific literature. Only basic coupling smell detection approaches and metrics seem to have been transferred to practice so far.

Objective:

This article aims to study the current practitioner’s understanding of coupling smells.

Method:

Based on grey literature sources containing practitioner views on coupling smells, we performed a Grounded Theory (GT) study. We used UML-based modeling to precisely encode our findings and performed a rigorous analysis of our codes and models.

Results:

Our results are defining factors of coupling smells, as well as smell impacts, trade-offs, relationships to other smells, relationships to practices and patterns, and fix options as perceived by practitioners. We further identified gaps in the understanding of coupling smells between science and practice, and derived opportunities and challenges for future scientific work.

Conclusions:

Five lessons are presented as opportunities and challenges for future research. Our results can help scientists to get a better understanding of practitioner concerns, and practitioners to get an overview of the current perception of other practitioners on coupling smells.

中文翻译：

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从业人员对气味耦合的理解-基于灰色理论的扎根理论研究

语境：

代码和设计气味，例如本文中研究的耦合气味，已得到广泛研究。现有的经验研究揭示了科学理论与实践之间的差距，科学文献尚未对此进行解释。到目前为止，似乎只有基本的耦合气味检测方法和度量标准已被采用。

客观的：

本文旨在研究当前从业人员对耦合气味的理解。

方法：

基于包含从业人员对耦合气味的观点的灰色文献资料，我们进行了扎根理论（GT）研究。我们使用基于UML的建模来精确编码我们的发现，并对我们的代码和模型进行了严格的分析。

结果：

我们的结果确定了气味耦合的因素，以及气味的影响，权衡，与其他气味的关系，与实践和模式的关系以及从业者认为的解决方案。我们进一步确定了在理解科学与实践之间的气味耦合方面的差距，并为未来的科学工作带来了机遇和挑战。

结论：

提出了五个教训，作为未来研究的机遇和挑战。我们的结果可以帮助科学家更好地了解从业者的关注点，并从业者获得对其他从业者对耦合气味的最新认识的概述。