Comments on: Aggregate Cyclomatic complexity is meaningless

By: Andy

Andy — Sun, 28 Jan 2007 14:37:17 +0000

Ayaz- right on! I tend to use JavaNCSS, in concert with PMD for determining code size complexities. One thing I have found time and time again is that big code (either a method or a class) usually has a high CC.

By: Andy

Andy — Sun, 28 Jan 2007 14:35:11 +0000

Chris- going point regarding measuring relationships in a class. PMD has a few rules around this notion that I’ve found helpful. Once such rule, CouplingBetweenObjects, “attempts to capture all unique Class attributes, local variables, and return types to determine how many objects a class is coupled to.”

By: Ayaz Anwar

Ayaz Anwar — Thu, 18 Jan 2007 17:14:24 +0000

The cyclomatic complexity of a class is meaningless because it is based on the concept of control-flow of a code. Complexity of a class is not measured by cyclomatic complexity rather it is being treated as design and code size complexity. Finding Design complexity of a class is something on which different views exist.So, considering cyclomatic complexity to determine the complexity of a class is actually you are making fool yourself.

By: Chris

Chris — Tue, 09 Jan 2007 10:33:47 +0000

I agree that as a measure of class-level complexity, aggregate CC is at best an indicator to take a closer look at some classes.
For controlling class complexity, I prefer to measure the total number of relationships between methods and fields in the class. If the methods themselves are kept to a reasonable CC limit, then this gives a good indication of class-level complexity.

By: Test Early » Boiling frogs and code metrics

Test Early » Boiling frogs and code metrics — Sun, 07 Jan 2007 14:57:06 +0000

[...] The whole point being that if you don’t monitor metrics like Cyclomatic complexity, all of a sudden you could have a problem on your hands, especially when dealing with legacy code. What a great analogy! Jeremy’s posting is an excellent read; however, it’s unclear towards the conclusion if the measured Cyclomatic complexity values are for single methods or classes in the aggregate. [...]