Definitions

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun computing, programming Anything in a program's source code that suggests the presence of a design problem.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Analogous to a bad smell indicating e.g. rotten food. Apparently coined by Kent Beck, American software engineer, in the late 1990s. Usage of the term increased after it was featured in the book Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code.

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