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Context: Several studies investigated the impact of anti-patterns (i.e.,"poor" solutions to recurring design problems) during maintenance activitiesand reported that anti-patterns significantly affect the developers' effortrequired to edit files. However, before developers edit files, they mustunderstand the source code of the systems. This source code must be easy tounderstand by developers. Objective: In this work, we provide a completeassessment of the impact of two instances of two anti-patterns, Blob orSpaghetti Code, on program comprehension. Method: We analyze the impact ofthese two anti-patterns through three empirical studies conducted atPolytechnique Montr\'eal (Canada) with 24 participants; at Carlton University(Canada) with 30 participants; and at University Basilicata (Italy) with 79participants. Results: We collect data from 372 tasks obtained thanks to 133different participants from the three universities. We use three metrics toassess the developers' comprehension of the source code: (1) the duration tocomplete each task; (2) their percentage of correct answers; and, (3) the NASAtask load index for their effort. Conclusions: We report that, although singleoccurrences of Blob or Spaghetti code anti-patterns have little effect on codecomprehension, two occurrences of either Blob or Spaghetti Code significantlyincreases the developers' time spent in their tasks, reduce their percentage ofcorrect answers, and increase their effort. Hence, we recommend that developersact on both anti-patterns, which should be refactored out of the source codewhenever possible. We also recommend further studies on combinations ofanti-patterns rather than on single anti-patterns one at a time.

A Large Scale Empirical Study of the Impact of Spaghetti Code and Blob Anti-patterns on Program Comprehension