Is @staticmethod proliferation a code smell?

Question

Consider a Python class with a number of @staticmethod methods and few instance methods. The static methods don't accept an instance of the defining class as parameters.

• Do you think that all these static methods don't belong to the class and should be factored out?
• If yes, which approach would you take to clean up such code?

Answer 1

Sounds like a module masquerading as a class (which is common to see in a language like Java where there are no methods outside of classes, so the only way to make something that looks like a module is to make a static only class). If the static methods are doing something that's actually related to the class as a whole, such as managing a pool of them, generating them (factories) or something along those lines then yes, they might be legitimate static methods. Otherwise, they probably should just be module level methods.