The social network of Java classes

Several works in literature have analyzed the link structure of programs in relation with software engineering: it has been observed that the programming standards caused small-world networks to emerge among classes in object-oriented programming. The need for coherent design and the coding conventions introduce regular patterns in the link structure of code. In this work, we study the social network naturally emerging from unrelated software projects. We studied the links present among Java classes coming from different contexts. In this case, any observable patterns come from social behaviors, rather than software engineering practices. In our analysis, we could observe a regular social network, organized according to a power-law distribution that is typical, for instance, of links among Web pages. We give a positive value to class links, which we consider a sign of relevance and acceptance. Out of this, we propose a way of ranking classes, and we present our prototype search engine for Java classes. Copyright 2006 ACM.