research-article

Are you still smelling it?: A comparative study between Java and Kotlin language

Authors:

Matheus Flauzino,

Júlio Veríssimo,

Vinicius H. S. Durelli,

Rafael S. DurelliAuthors Info & Claims

SBCARS '18: Proceedings of the VII Brazilian Symposium on Software Components, Architectures, and Reuse

Pages 23 - 32

https://doi.org/10.1145/3267183.3267186

Published: 17 September 2018 Publication History

Abstract

Java is one of the most widely used programming languages. However, Java is a verbose language, thus one of the main drawbacks of the language is that even simple tasks often entail writing a significant amount of code. In some cases, writing too much code might lead to certain code smells, which are violations of fundamental design that can negatively impact the overall quality of programs. To allow programmers to write concise code, JetBrains created a new language named Kotlin. Nevertheless, few studies have evaluated whether Kotlin leads to concise and clearer code in comparison to Java. We conjecture that due to Java's verbosity, programs written in Java are likely to have more code smells than Kotlin programs. Therefore, we set out to evaluate whether some types of code smells are more common in Java programs. To this end, we carried out a large-scale empirical study involving more than 6 million lines of code from programs available in 100 repositories. We found that on average Kotlin programs have less code smells than Java programs.

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Cited By

Coppola RFulcini TArdito LTorchiano M(2025)Kotlin assimilating the Android ecosystem: An appraisal of diffusion and impact on maintainabilityJournal of Systems and Software10.1016/j.jss.2025.112346222(112346)Online publication date: Apr-2025
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jss.2025.112346
Feng QJi HMa XLiang P(2024)Cross-Language Dependencies: An Empirical Study of Kotlin-JavaProceedings of the 18th ACM/IEEE International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement10.1145/3674805.3686680(189-199)Online publication date: 24-Oct-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3674805.3686680
Perinello LGaggi O(2024)Accessibility of Mobile User Interfaces using Flutter and React Native2024 IEEE 21st Consumer Communications & Networking Conference (CCNC)10.1109/CCNC51664.2024.10454681(1-6)Online publication date: 6-Jan-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/CCNC51664.2024.10454681
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Index Terms

Are you still smelling it?: A comparative study between Java and Kotlin language
1. Software and its engineering
  1. Software notations and tools
    1. Software maintenance tools

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SBCARS '18: Proceedings of the VII Brazilian Symposium on Software Components, Architectures, and Reuse

September 2018

123 pages

ISBN:9781450365543

DOI:10.1145/3267183

Program Chair:
Ingrid Nunes
Prosoft Research Group, Instituto de Informática, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil

Copyright © 2018 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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SBC: Brazilian Computer Society
UFSCar: Federal University of São Carlos
IFSP: Federal Institute of São Paulo

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New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 17 September 2018

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SBCARS '18

SBCARS '18: XII Brazilian Symposium on Software Components, Architectures, and Reuse

September 17 - 21, 2018

Sao Carlos, Brazil

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SBCARS '18 Paper Acceptance Rate 11 of 40 submissions, 28%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 23 of 79 submissions, 29%

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Cited By

Coppola RFulcini TArdito LTorchiano M(2025)Kotlin assimilating the Android ecosystem: An appraisal of diffusion and impact on maintainabilityJournal of Systems and Software10.1016/j.jss.2025.112346222(112346)Online publication date: Apr-2025
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jss.2025.112346
Feng QJi HMa XLiang P(2024)Cross-Language Dependencies: An Empirical Study of Kotlin-JavaProceedings of the 18th ACM/IEEE International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement10.1145/3674805.3686680(189-199)Online publication date: 24-Oct-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3674805.3686680
Perinello LGaggi O(2024)Accessibility of Mobile User Interfaces using Flutter and React Native2024 IEEE 21st Consumer Communications & Networking Conference (CCNC)10.1109/CCNC51664.2024.10454681(1-6)Online publication date: 6-Jan-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/CCNC51664.2024.10454681
Fawad MRasool GPalma F(2024)Android Source Code Smells: A Systematic Literature ReviewSoftware: Practice and Experience10.1002/spe.3401Online publication date: 27-Dec-2024
https://doi.org/10.1002/spe.3401
Hnatkowska BKrych B(2023)Comparing the understandability of iteration mechanisms over Collections in JavaFoundations of Computing and Decision Sciences10.2478/fcds-2023-000248:1(19-37)Online publication date: 19-Mar-2023
https://doi.org/10.2478/fcds-2023-0002
Wu ZChen XLee S(2023)A systematic literature review on Android-specific smellsJournal of Systems and Software10.1016/j.jss.2023.111677201:COnline publication date: 1-Jul-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1016/j.jss.2023.111677
Mateus BMartinez MKolski C(2023)Learning migration models for supporting incremental language migrations of software applicationsInformation and Software Technology10.1016/j.infsof.2022.107082153:COnline publication date: 1-Jan-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1016/j.infsof.2022.107082
Liu PLi LLiu KMcIntosh SGrundy J(2023)Understanding the quality and evolution of Android app build systemsJournal of Software: Evolution and Process10.1002/smr.2602Online publication date: 6-Aug-2023
https://doi.org/10.1002/smr.2602
Vlasova ATigina MVlasov IBirillo AGolubev YBryksin TLo DMcIntosh SNovielli N(2022)LupaProceedings of the 19th International Conference on Mining Software Repositories10.1145/3524842.3528477(398-402)Online publication date: 23-May-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3524842.3528477
Li LLiu Y(2022)Mapping Modern JVM Language Code to Analysis-Friendly Graphs: A Study with KotlinInternational Journal of Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering10.1142/S0218194022500735(1-22)Online publication date: 17-Dec-2022
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