Do Developers Focus on Severe Code Smells?

Code smells are structures in the code that suggestthe possibility of refactoring. To prioritize code smells in large-scale source code, several tools for refactoring calculate theirseverity based on software metrics. Although several metrics are known as maintainability indicators, it is still unclear whether these severity indicators are in line with developer's perception. In this paper, we investigate whether developers focus on severe code smells. The result shows that developers focus on only particular types of severe smells and refactoring do not decrease the severity of code smell significantly.