Software pathology is the area of software engineering devoted to understanding the mechanisms that cause program bugs. Software pathology seeks to improve software quality by understanding software health.

Rather than dealing with the external characteristics of an application, software pathology examines the internal characteristics that customers rarely see. These characteristics have a direct effect on program robustness, maintainability, performance and lifetime.

Software health can be improved by using a scientific approach to software construction and maintenance. The health of legacy software can be improved by applying various renovation techniques, including refactoring and code optimization.