Code Smell is an industry accepted term. I am unclear how any other interpretation of the modified title could be expected.
As a noun, it can describe specific ways that hypothetical code might not follow best practices. For instance, code fragments that have been copy-pasted many times rather than refactored into a function, is a code smell. The use of many global variables is a code smell. Together, these are "code smells".
As a verb, it describes specific code which exhibits these sorts of attributes. A particular source file can smell. The code... smells. The phrase can also be used adjectively, to say that code is smelly.
The title "Code smells of desperation" could imply the noun form, in which an article discusses various code smells which could be a general indication that a hypothetical code base might be in desperate shape. Or that the team maintaining it is. It is an article about smells, in code.
Whereas, "this code smells of desperation" uses the verb form to indicate that the article is about a particular code base which appears to be in desperate shape, because of the smells it specifically gives off. It is an article about code, which smells.
> That's how I interpreted the title.
That's my point - even that is ambiguous.
Do you mean, "There is no code that doesn't smell of desperation" or "Of all the code that exists, herein lies the complete subset of it that smells of desperation"
eg:
(All code) smells of desperation vs. All (code smells) of desperation.