Cyclomatic Complexity is a software metric that is used to measure the complexity of a given piece of code. It does this by counting the number of execution paths through the code. For example, a block of code with no branching statements has a complexity of 1. If you add an if test, then there will be 2 paths, one where the condition is true, and one where it is false.
Software developers strive to build and maintain code with low complexity as it helps readability, and in theory reduces defect count. However, that theory has recently been challenged with the release of findings by the metrics dashboard provider Enerjy. Enerjy analyzed tens of thousands of source files, correlating defects against the Cyclomatic Complexity (CC):
The results show that the files having a CC value of 11 had the lowest probability of being fault-prone (28%). Files with a CC value of 38 had a probability of 50% of being fault-prone. Files containing CC values of 74 and up were determined to have a 98% plus probability of being fault-prone.
Andrew Binstock from SDTimes provided an interesting observation:
What Enerjy found was that routines with CCNs of 1 through 25 did not follow the expected result that greater CCN correlates to greater probability of defects. Rather, it found that for CCNs of 1 through 11, the higher the CCN the lower the bug probability. It was not until CCN reached 25 that defect probability rose sufficiently to be equal that of routines with a CCN of 1.
The Enerjy results have created some confusion around how CC is counted. Keith Braithwaite pointed out that Enerjy study counted CC at the file level, not the method level. Christopher Beck, commenting on The Quality of TDD, chimed in saying:
... it’s not CC (and shouldn’t be named CC). Rather it comes close to another metric called WMC or “Weighted Methods per Class”, which sums up CC values of a class.
Regardless of the purity of the Enerjy approach to computing CC, one thing is clear - if your CC is greater or higher than 74 there is a very good chance it is buggy.