An Exploratory Study on Dead Methods in Open-source Java Desktop Applications
Danilo Caivano, Pietro Cassieri, Simone Romano, Giuseppe Scanniello · 2021
Background. Dead code is a code smell. It can refer to code blocks, fields, methods, etc. that are unused and/or unreachable. Empirical evidence shows that dead code harms source code comprehensibility and maintainability in software applications. Researchers have gathered little empirical evidence on the spread of dead code in software applications. Moreover, we know little about the role of this code smell during software evolution.