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The rapid adoption of Deep Learning (DL)-enabled systems has revolutionized software development, driving innovation across various domains. However, these systems also introduce unique challenges, particularly in maintaining software…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2025-10-07 Gilberto Recupito , Vincenzo De Martino , Dario Di Nucci , Fabio Palomba

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

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

The impact of Technical Debt (TD) on software maintenance and evolution is of great concern, but recent evidence shows that a considerable amount of TD is fixed by the same developers who introduced it; this is termed self-fixed TD. This…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2021-06-23 Jie Tan , Daniel Feitosa , Paris Avgeriou

Context: Self-admitted technical debt (SATD) occurs when developers acknowledge shortcuts in code. In scientific software (SSW), such debt poses unique risks to the validity and reproducibility of results. Objective: This study aims to…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2026-01-19 Eric L. Melin , Nasir U. Eisty , Gregory Watson , Addi Malviya-Thakur

Self-admitted technical debt refers to situations where a software developer knows that their current implementation is not optimal and indicates this using a source code comment. In this work, we hypothesize that it is possible to develop…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2019-10-22 Rungroj Maipradit , Christoph Treude , Hideaki Hata , Kenichi Matsumoto

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

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

Context: Previous research on software aging is limited with focus on dynamic runtime indicators like memory and performance, often neglecting evolutionary indicators like source code comments and narrowly examining legacy issues within the…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2025-04-25 Murali Sridharan , Mika Mäntylä , Leevi Rantala

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning have witnessed rapid, significant improvements in Natural Language Processing (NLP) tasks. Utilizing Deep Learning, researchers have taken advantage of repository comments in Software Engineering…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2023-03-20 William Aiken , Paul K. Mvula , Paula Branco , Guy-Vincent Jourdan , Mehrdad Sabetzadeh , Herna Viktor

Large Language Models (LLMs) are increasingly embedded in software via APIs like OpenAI, offering powerful AI features without heavy infrastructure. Yet these integrations bring their own form of self-admitted technical debt (SATD). In this…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2025-09-26 Ahmed Aljohani , Hyunsook Do

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

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

Self-Admitted Technical Debt (SATD) refers to circumstances where developers use textual artifacts to explain why the existing implementation is not optimal. Past research in detecting SATD has focused on either identifying SATD…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2025-04-30 Edi Sutoyo , Paris Avgeriou , Andrea Capiluppi

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, 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 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

Background: Software security is crucial to ensure that the users are protected from undesirable consequences such as malware attacks which can result in loss of data and, subsequently, financial loss. Technical Debt (TD) is a metaphor…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2023-07-24 Joshua Aldrich Edbert , Sahrima Jannat Oishwee , Shubhashis Karmakar , Zadia Codabux , Roberto Verdecchia

Self-Admitted Technical Debt (SATD), cases where developers intentionally acknowledge suboptimal solutions in code through comments, poses a significant challenge to software maintainability. Left unresolved, SATD can degrade code quality…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2025-01-20 Mohammad Sadegh Sheikhaei , Yuan Tian , Shaowei Wang , Bowen Xu

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