Code Decay

What is Code Decay?
Code decay occurs when a software system becomes increasing difficult to maintain. The design and code of the system become more complex, making changes to the system becomes noticeably more difficult, more costly in time and resources, and more prone to regression errors. Code decay can result in a system that is more expensive to maintain because the number of errors introduced by a single change in the system (regression) steadily increases. In the worst case, a single change can – on average – introduce one or more regression errors into the system.

How Does Code Decay Occur?
Code decay occurs simply by touching the code. The more code is touched – as measured by changes to the files where the code resides – the higher the amount of code decay. This is true on average across the collection of files. Code decay happens because code tends to increase in complexity the more it’s modified. Files that have been modified the most are usually the most complex, thus most likely to suffer from code decay.

How Can Maintenance Slow Down Code Decay?
Refactoring reduces code decay. Refactoring is a set of techniques for simplifying code without changing what it does.

Reference: IBM RUP for Maintenance

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