Hidden in Plain Sight: Where Developers Confess Self-Admitted Technical Debt
Fuente:
arXiv
Guardado en:
| Autores principales: | , , , , , |
|---|---|
| Formato: | Preprint |
| Publicado: |
2025
|
| Materias: | |
| Acceso en línea: | |
| Etiquetas: |
Agregar Etiqueta
Sin Etiquetas, Sea el primero en etiquetar este registro!
|
| _version_ | 1866914132622573568 |
|---|---|
| author | Sridharan, Murali Robredo, Mikel Rantala, Leevi Esposito, Matteo Lenarduzzi, Valentina Mantyla, Mika |
| author_facet | Sridharan, Murali Robredo, Mikel Rantala, Leevi Esposito, Matteo Lenarduzzi, Valentina Mantyla, Mika |
| contents | Context. Detecting Self-Admitted Technical Debt (SATD) is crucial for proactive software maintenance. Previous research has primarily targeted detecting and prioritizing SATD, with little focus on the source code afflicted with SATD. Our goal in this work is to connect the SATD comments with source code constructs that surround them.
Method. We leverage the extensive SATD dataset PENTACET, containing code comments from over 9000 Java Open Source Software (OSS) repositories. We quantitatively infer where SATD most commonly occurs and which code constructs/statements it most frequently affects.
Results and Conclusions. Our large-scale study links over 225,000 SATD comments to their surrounding code, showing that SATD mainly arises in inline code near definitions, conditionals, and exception handling, where developers face uncertainty and trade-offs, revealing it as an intentional signal of awareness during change rather than mere neglect. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2511_01529 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2025 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Hidden in Plain Sight: Where Developers Confess Self-Admitted Technical Debt Sridharan, Murali Robredo, Mikel Rantala, Leevi Esposito, Matteo Lenarduzzi, Valentina Mantyla, Mika Software Engineering Computation and Language Programming Languages Context. Detecting Self-Admitted Technical Debt (SATD) is crucial for proactive software maintenance. Previous research has primarily targeted detecting and prioritizing SATD, with little focus on the source code afflicted with SATD. Our goal in this work is to connect the SATD comments with source code constructs that surround them. Method. We leverage the extensive SATD dataset PENTACET, containing code comments from over 9000 Java Open Source Software (OSS) repositories. We quantitatively infer where SATD most commonly occurs and which code constructs/statements it most frequently affects. Results and Conclusions. Our large-scale study links over 225,000 SATD comments to their surrounding code, showing that SATD mainly arises in inline code near definitions, conditionals, and exception handling, where developers face uncertainty and trade-offs, revealing it as an intentional signal of awareness during change rather than mere neglect. |
| title | Hidden in Plain Sight: Where Developers Confess Self-Admitted Technical Debt |
| topic | Software Engineering Computation and Language Programming Languages |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.01529 |