There has been a considerable amout of discussion about code metrics (e.g.: What is the fascination with code metrics?). I (as a software developer) am really interested in those metrics because I think that they can help one to write better code. At least they are helpful when it comes to finding areas of code that need some refactoring.
However, what I would like to know is the following. Are there some evaluations of those source code metrics that prove that they really do correlate with the bug-rate or the maintainability of a method. For example: Do methods with a very high cyclomatic-complexity really introduce more bugs than methods with a low complexity? Or do methods with a high difficulty level (Halstead) really need much more amount to maintain them than methods with a low one?
Maybe someone knows about some reliable research in this area.
Thanks a lot!
Here are some:
Object-oriented metrics that predict maintainability
A Quantitative Evaluation of Maintainability Enhancement by Refactoring
Predicting Maintainability with Object-Oriented Metrics - An Empirical Comparison
Investigating the Effect of Coupling Metrics on Fault Proneness in Object-Oriented Systems
The Confounding Effect of Class Size on the Validity of Object-Oriented Metrics