An aspect of the present invention identifies deprecated routines invoked by a software application implementing subtype polymorphism by examination of the software application, without having to execute the software instructions. In one embodiment, upon receiving software instructions constituting the software application, the polymorphic data types, variables of the data types, and a corresponding set of assignments for each variable are identified in the received software instructions. The specific instructions containing invocations of routines associated with the identified variables are also found. In response to finding the invocations, the routines that are invoked corresponding to the specific instructions are determined. The specific (determined) routines that are deprecated are ascertained and a report is thereafter generated indicating the specific routines.