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As large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT, Copilot, Claude, and Gemini become integrated into software development workflows, developers increasingly leave traces of AI involvement in their code comments. Among these, some comments…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2026-01-13 Abdullah Al Mujahid , Mia Mohammad Imran

Technical debt (TD) refers to delayed tasks and immature artifacts that may bring short-term benefits but incur extra costs of change during maintenance and evolution in the long term. TD has been extensively studied in the past decade, and…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2022-12-13 Zengyang Li , Yilin Peng , Peng Liang , Apostolos Ampatzoglou , Ran Mo , Hui Liu , Xiaoxiao Qi

When developers use different keywords such as TODO and FIXME in source code comments to describe self-admitted technical debt (SATD), we refer it as Keyword-Labeled SATD (KL-SATD). We study KL-SATD from 33 software repositories with 13,588…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2020-08-13 Leevi Rantala , Mika Mäntylä , David Lo

Most Self-Admitted Technical Debt (SATD) research utilizes explicit SATD features such as 'TODO' and 'FIXME' for SATD detection. A closer look reveals several SATD research uses simple SATD ('Easy to Find') code comments without the…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2023-08-14 Murali Sridharan , Leevi Rantala , Mika Mäntylä

Speeding up development may produce technical debt, i.e., not-quite-right code for which the effort to make it right increases with time as a sort of interest. Developers may be aware of the debt as they admit it in their code comments.…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2022-05-05 Barbara Russo , Matteo Camilli , Moritz Mock

Background. Technical debt (TD) has long been one of the key factors influencing the maintainability of software products. It represents technical compromises that sacrifice long-term software quality for potential short-term benefits.…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2024-07-31 Xiaozhou Li , Matteo Esposito , Andrea Janes , Valentina Lenarduzzi

Technical debt refers to suboptimal code that degrades software quality. When developers intentionally introduce such debt, it is called self-admitted technical debt (SATD). Since SATD hinders maintenance, identifying its categories is key…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2025-10-24 Sota Nakashima , Yuta Ishimoto , Masanari Kondo , Tao Xiao , Yasutaka Kamei

Technical Debt (TD) refers to the situation where developers make trade-offs to achieve short-term goals at the expense of long-term code quality, which can have a negative impact on the quality of software systems. In the context of code…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2022-09-27 Liming Fu , Peng Liang , Zeeshan Rasheed , Zengyang Li , Amjed Tahir , Xiaofeng Han

Self-Admitted Technical Debt (SATD) refers to technical compromises explicitly admitted by developers in natural language artifacts such as code comments, commit messages, and issue trackers. Among its types, Architecture Technical Debt…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2026-03-04 Edi Sutoyo , Paris Avgeriou , Andrea Capiluppi

Technical debt (TD) refers to suboptimal choices during software development that achieve short-term goals at the expense of long-term quality. Although developers often informally discuss TD, the concept has not yet crystalized into a…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2022-01-31 Ipek Ozkaya , Zachary Kurtz , Robert L. Nord , Raghvinder S. Sangwan , Satish M. Srinivasan

Technical Debt is a term begat by Ward Cunningham to signify the measure of adjust required to put a software into that state which it ought to have had from the earliest starting point. Often organizations need to support continuous and…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2019-10-29 Nikhil Oswal

Context: Technical Debt needs to be managed to avoid disastrous consequences, and investigating developers' habits concerning technical debt management is invaluable information in software development. Objective: This study aims to…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2020-09-10 Zadia Codabux , Christopher Dutchyn

Technical debt, specifically Self-Admitted Technical Debt (SATD), remains a significant challenge for software developers and managers due to its potential to adversely affect long-term software maintainability. Although various approaches…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2023-08-28 Yikun Li , Mohamed Soliman , Paris Avgeriou , Maarten van Ittersum

Technical Debt is a term used to classify non-optimal solutions during software development. These solutions cause several maintenance problems and hence they should be avoided or at least documented. Although there are a considered number…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2016-04-07 Marcelino Campos Oliveira Silva , Marco Tulio Valente , Ricardo Terra

Context: Technical debt (TD) is a widely studied metaphor that helps to explain how sub-optimal decisions that can harm software maintainability over time. Although incurring TD is not intrinsically bad, tracking and managing TD are crucial…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2026-05-29 João Paulo Biazotto , Daniel Feitosa , Paris Avgeriou , Elisa Yumi Nakagawa

Keeping track of and managing Self-Admitted Technical Debts (SATDs) is important for maintaining a healthy software project. Current active-learning SATD recognition tool involves manual inspection of 24% of the test comments on average to…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2022-01-27 Huy Tu , Tim Menzies

Keeping track of and managing Self-Admitted Technical Debts (SATDs) are important to maintaining a healthy software project. This requires much time and effort from human experts to identify the SATDs manually. The current automated…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2020-10-20 Zhe Yu , Fahmid Morshed Fahid , Huy Tu , Tim Menzies

Context: Technical Debt (TD) can be paid back either by those that incurred it or by others. We call the former self-fixed TD, and it can be particularly effective, as developers are experts in their own code and are well-suited to fix the…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2021-10-13 Jie Tan , Daniel Feitosa , Paris Avgeriou

Technical debt (TD) is a metaphor that is used to communicate the consequences of poor software development practices to non-technical stakeholders. In recent years, it has gained significant attention in agile software development (ASD).…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2024-01-29 Woubshet Nema Behutiye , Pilar Rodriguez , Markku Oivo , Ayse Tosun

To complete tasks faster, developers often have to sacrifice the quality of the software. Such compromised practice results in the increasing burden to developers in future development. The metaphor, technical debt, describes such practice.…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2022-02-15 Jiakun Liu , Qiao Huang , Xin Xia , Emad Shihab , David Lo , Shanping Li