Etymology

Analogous to a bad smell indicating e.g. rotten food. Apparently coined by American software engineer Kent BeckCategory:English terms coined by Kent Beck#CODESMELLCategory:English coinages#CODESMELL, in the late 1990s. Popularized via the book Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code, co-authored by Beck.

Noun

code smell (plural code smells)Category:English lemmas#CODESMELLCategory:English nouns#CODESMELLCategory:English countable nouns#CODESMELLCategory:English multiword terms#CODESMELLCategory:English entries with incorrect language header#CODESMELLCategory:Pages with entries#CODE%20SMELLCategory:Pages with 1 entry#CODE%20SMELL

1. (programmingCategory:en:Programming#CODESMELL) Anything in a program's source code that suggests the presence of a design problem.
   • 2021, Christian Clausen, Five Lines of Code: How and when to Refactor, Manning, →ISBN, page 4:

     A well-known code smell is as follows: a function should do one thing.

     Category:English terms with quotations#CODESMELL

Further reading

• code smell on Wikipedia.Wikipedia