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Advances in AI have led to new types of technical debt in software engineering projects. AI-based competition platforms face challenges due to rapid prototyping and a lack of adherence to software engineering principles by participants,…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2024-08-02 Dionysios Sklavenitis , Dimitris Kalles

With the increasing reliance on software and automation nowadays, tight deadlines, limited resources, and prioritization of functionality over security can lead to insecure coding practices. When not handled properly, these constraints…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2025-07-16 Chaima Boufaied , Taher Ghaleb , Zainab Masood

[Context] Technical debt (TD) in machine learning (ML) systems, much like its counterpart in software engineering (SE), holds the potential to lead to future rework, posing risks to productivity, quality, and team morale. Despite growing…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2025-02-19 Rodrigo Ximenes , Antonio Pedro Santos Alves , Tatiana Escovedo , Rodrigo Spinola , Marcos Kalinowski

Context: The term technical debt (TD) describes the aggregation of sub-optimal solutions that serve to impede the evolution and maintenance of a system. Some claim that the broken windows theory (BWT), a concept borrowed from criminology,…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2023-12-29 William Levén , Hampus Broman , Terese Besker , Richard Torkar

The ever-increasing amount, variety as well as generation and processing speed of today's data pose a variety of new challenges for developing Data-Intensive Software Systems (DISS). As with developing other kinds of software systems,…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2019-06-03 Harald Foidl , Michael Felderer , Stefan Biffl

Perhaps the most widely used form of code documentation is function header comments. We performed a large-scale survey of 367 developers to catalog their expectations from such documentation and to chronicle actual practice. Paradoxically,…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2024-01-17 Arthur Oxenhorn , Almog Mor , Uri Stern , Dror G. Feitelson

Context: Technical Debt requirements are related to the distance between the ideal value of the specification and the system's actual implementation, which are consequences of strategic decisions for immediate gains, or unintended changes…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2021-07-15 Ana Melo , Roberta Fagundes , Valentina Lenarduzzi , Wylliams Santos

Microservice architectures provide an intuitive promise of high maintainability and evolvability due to loose coupling. However, these quality attributes are notably vulnerable to technical debt (TD). Few studies address TD in microservice…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2025-06-23 Klara Borowa , Andrzej Ratkowski , Roberto Verdecchia

A central function of code review is to increase understanding; helping reviewers understand a code change aids in knowledge transfer and finding bugs. Comments in code largely serve a similar purpose, helping future readers understand the…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2022-04-04 Nikitha Rao , Jason Tsay , Martin Hirzel , Vincent J. Hellendoorn

Architectural debt is a form of technical debt that derives from the gap between the architectural design of the system as it "should be" compared to "as it is". We measured architecture debt in two ways: 1) in terms of system-wide coupling…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2018-12-03 Maleknaz Nayebi , Yuanfang Cai , Rick Kazman , Guenther Ruhe , Qiong Feng , Chris Carlson , Francis Chew

Version control systems for source code, such as Git, are key tools in modern software development environments. Many developers use online services, such as GitHub or GitLab, for collaborative software development. While software projects…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2022-11-15 Alexander Krause , Jan H. Klemmer , Nicolas Huaman , Dominik Wermke , Yasemin Acar , Sascha Fahl

Technical debt (TD) is a metaphor to describe the trade-off between short-term workarounds and long-term goals in software development. Despite being widely used to explain technical issues in business terms, industry and academia still…

Code comments are important for program comprehension, development, and maintenance tasks. Given the varying standards for code comments, and their unstructured or semi-structured nature, developers get easily confused (especially novice…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2023-04-26 Pooja Rani , Mathias Birrer , Sebastiano Panichella , Mohammad Ghafari , Oscar Nierstrasz

When developing software, it is vitally important to keep the level of technical debt down since it is well established from several studies that technical debt can, e.g., lower the development productivity, decrease the developers' morale,…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2021-01-06 Terese Besker , Antonio Martini , Jan Bosch

Background: Software companies must balance fast value delivery with quality, a trade-off that can introduce technical debt and potentially waste developers' time. As software systems evolve, technical debt tends to increase. However,…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2024-06-04 Bhuwan Paudel , Javier Gonzalez-Huerta , Ehsan Zabardast , Eriks Klotins

The availability of open-source projects facilitates developers to contribute and collaborate on a wide range of projects. As a result, the developer community contributing to such open-source projects is also increasing. Many of the…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2021-03-02 Akhila Sri Manasa Venigalla , Sridhar Chimalakonda

Software development is a collaborative process that involves various interactions among individuals and teams. TODO comments in source code play a critical role in managing and coordinating diverse tasks during this process. However, this…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2025-03-20 Haoye Wang , Zhipeng Gao , Tingting Bi , John Grundy , Xinyu Wang , Minghui Wu , Xiaohu Yang

Software development tasks must be performed successfully to achieve software quality and customer satisfaction. Knowing whether software tasks are likely to fail is essential to ensure the success of software projects. Issue Tracking…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2020-06-03 Sandra L. Ramírez-Mora , Hanna Oktaba , Helena Gómez-Adorno

Context: Human-centric defects (HCDs) are nuanced and subjective defects that often occur due to end-user perceptions or differences, such as their genders, ages, cultures, languages, disabilities, socioeconomic status, and educational…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2024-08-06 Vedant Chauhan , Chetan Arora , Hourieh Khalajzadeh , John Grundy

This white paper provides an overview of the topic of "technical debt" and presents an approach for managing technical debt in teams. The white paper is based on the results of my dissertation, which aimed to translate scientific findings…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2026-03-04 Marion Wiese