Correlating Pattern Grime and Quality Attributes

The gang of four design patterns are widely adopted in industry as best practices and their effect on software quality has been long investigated in academia, with both positive and negative consequences being observed. One important parameter that relates to the effect of patterns on quality is the deterioration of pattern instances due to the buildup of artifacts unrelated to the pattern structure. This is called pattern grime and can potentially diminish some of the benefits of using patterns in the first place. In this paper we investigate the relation between pattern grime and three qualities, namely performance, security, and correctness. To this end, we conducted a case study with five industrial projects (approx. 260 000 lines of code) implemented by 16 developers. Our findings suggest a correlation between the accumulation of grime and decreased levels of performance, security, and correctness. Moreover, factors such as the project itself, pattern type and the developer can influence this relation. The obtained results can benefit both researchers and practitioners, as we provide evidence on the accumulation of pattern grime and its correlation to performance, security and correctness, and how different factors affect these correlations.