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Self-Admitted Technical Debt (SATD) is a form of Technical Debt where developers document the debt using source code comments (SATD-C) or issues (SATD-I). However, it is still unclear the circumstances that drive developers to choose one or…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2024-08-28 Laerte Xavier , João Eduardo Montandon , Marco Tulio Valente

In modern software engineering, build systems play the crucial role of facilitating the conversion of source code into software artifacts. Recent research has explored high-level causes of build failures, but has largely overlooked the…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2025-04-03 Anwar Ghammam , Dhia Elhaq Rzig , Mohamed Almukhtar , Rania Khalsi , Foyzul Hassan , Marouane Kessentini

Background. Software companies need to manage and refactor Technical Debt issues. Therefore, it is necessary to understand if and when refactoring Technical Debt should be prioritized with respect to developing features or fixing bugs.…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2020-01-31 Valentina Lenarduzzi , Terese Besker , Davide Taibi , Antonio Martini , Francesca Arcelli Fontana

Technical debt is a metaphor indicating sub-optimal solutions implemented for short-term benefits by sacrificing the long-term maintainability and evolvability of software. A special type of technical debt is explicitly admitted by software…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2022-02-07 Yikun Li , Mohamed Soliman , Paris Avgeriou

Technical Debt (TD) refers to the long-term costs incurred when developers prioritize short-term delivery over quality-improving work. Architectural Technical Debt (ATD) arises when architectural decisions (e.g., technology choices,…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2026-05-18 Edi Sutoyo , Paris Avgeriou , Andrea Capiluppi

Self-admitted technical debt (SATD) refers to comments in which developers explicitly acknowledge code issues, workarounds, or suboptimal solutions. SATD is known to significantly increase software maintenance effort. While extensive…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2025-12-22 Shahidul Islam , Md Nahidul Islam Opu , Shaowei Wang , Shaiful Chowdhury

Motivation: Technical debt is a metaphor that describes not-quite-right code introduced for short-term needs. Developers are aware of it and admit it in source code comments, which is called Self- Admitted Technical Debt (SATD). Therefore,…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2023-12-05 Moritz Mock

The emergence of open-source ML libraries such as TensorFlow and Google Auto ML has enabled developers to harness state-of-the-art ML algorithms with minimal overhead. However, during this accelerated ML development process, said developers…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2025-12-01 Aaditya Bhatia , Foutse Khomh , Bram Adams , Ahmed E Hassan

Self-admitted technical debt (SATD) refers to technical debt that is intentionally introduced by developers and explicitly documented in code comments or other software artifacts (e.g., issue reports) to annotate sub-optimal decisions made…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2022-03-31 Jerin Yasmin , Mohammad Sadegh Sheikhaei , Yuan Tian

Modern software is developed under considerable time pressure, which implies that developers more often than not have to resort to compromises when it comes to code that is well written and code that just does the job. This has led over the…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2020-09-29 Rungroj Maipradit , Bin Lin , Csaba Nagy , Gabriele Bavota , Michele Lanza , Hideaki Hata , Kenichi Matsumoto

Developers sometimes choose design and implementation shortcuts due to the pressure from tight release schedules. However, shortcuts introduce technical debt that increases as the software evolves. The debt needs to be repaid as fast as…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2022-01-07 Biruk Asmare Muse , Csaba Nagy , Anthony Cleve , Foutse Khomh , Giuliano Antoniol

Technical debt refers to taking shortcuts to achieve short-term goals while sacrificing the long-term maintainability and evolvability of software systems. A large part of technical debt is explicitly reported by the developers themselves;…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2023-04-24 Yikun Li , Mohamed Soliman , Paris Avgeriou

In software development, technical debt (TD) refers to suboptimal implementation choices made by the developers to meet urgent deadlines and limited resources, posing challenges for future maintenance. Self-Admitted Technical Debt (SATD) is…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2025-06-03 Phuoc Pham , Murali Sridharan , Matteo Esposito , Valentina Lenarduzzi

Technical Debt occurs when development teams favour short-term operability over long-term stability. Since this places software maintainability at risk, technical debt requires early attention to avoid paying for accumulated interest. Most…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2022-10-14 Abdulaziz Alhefdhi , Hoa Khanh Dam , Yusuf Sulistyo Nugroho , Hideaki Hata , Takashi Ishio , Aditya Ghose

Context. Technical Debt (TD) is a metaphor for technical problems that are not visible to users and customers but hinder developers in their work, making future changes more difficult. TD is often incurred due to tight project deadlines and…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2022-04-26 Marion Wiese , Paula Rachow , Matthias Riebisch , Julian Schwarze

Self-Admitted Technical Debt (SATD) is a metaphorical concept to describe the self-documented addition of technical debt to a software project in the form of source code comments. SATD can linger in projects and degrade source-code quality,…

The development of Machine Learning (ML)- and, more recently, of Deep Learning (DL)-intensive systems requires suitable choices, e.g., in terms of technology, algorithms, and hyper-parameters. Such choices depend on developers' experience,…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2024-09-19 Federica Pepe , Fiorella Zampetti , Antonio Mastropaolo , Gabriele Bavota , Massimiliano Di Penta

Self-admitted technical debt (SATD), referring to comments flagged by developers that explicitly acknowledge suboptimal code or incomplete functionality, has received extensive attention in machine learning (ML) and traditional (Non-ML)…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2026-01-21 Niruthiha Selvanayagam , Taher A. Ghaleb , Manel Abdellatif

Self-Admitted Technical Debt, or SATD, is a self-admission of technical debt present in a software system. To effectively manage SATD, developers need to estimate its priority and assess the effort required to fix the described technical…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2025-01-03 Nathan Cassee , Neil Ernst , Nicole Novielli , Alexander Serebrenik

Architectural technical debt (ATD) represents trade-offs in software architecture that accelerate initial development but create long-term maintenance challenges. ATD, in particular when self-admitted, impacts the foundational structure of…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2025-05-06 Edi Sutoyo , Paris Avgeriou , Andrea Capiluppi