How are test smells treated in the wild? A tale of two empirical studies

Developing test code may be a time­-consuming process that requires much effort and cost, especially when done manually. In addition, during this process, developers testers are likely to adopt bad design choices, which lead introducing the so­-called smells in code. As with size increases, these tests might become more complex, as consequence, challenging understand evolve them correctly. Therefore, harm quality maintenance break whole software testing activities. context, study aims whether practitioners unintentionally insert they implement We first carried out an expert survey analyze usage frequency of set then interviews reach deeper understanding how deal smells. Sixty professionals participated survey, fifty interviews. The yielded results indicate experienced introduce their daily programming tasks, even using companies’ standardized practices. Additionally, tools support development improvement, but most interviewees not aware smells’ concepts.