Improving Source Code Quality through the Definition of Linguistic Antipatterns

Previous studies showed that linguistic information contained in source code is a valuable source of information and can help to improve program comprehension. The proposed research focuses on improving the quality of source code by studying common negative practices with respect to linguistic information. The definition of the so called linguistic antipatterns are expected to increase the awareness of the existence of such bad practices and to discourage their use. We also propose to study the relation between negative practices in linguistic information (i.e., linguistic antipatterns) and negative practices in structural information (i.e., design antipatterns). We discuss the proposed methodology and some preliminary results.