Evidence is All We Need: Do Self-Admitted Technical Debts Impact Method-Level Maintenance?

TL;DR

This study empirically investigates the impact of Self-Admitted Technical Debt at the method level, revealing that SATD correlates with lower code quality, increased bugs, and maintenance challenges in open-source software.

Contribution

It provides the first large-scale empirical evidence linking method-level SATD to various maintenance issues, emphasizing the importance of early detection and management.

Findings

Methods with SATD are larger and more complex.

SATD methods have higher bug and change rates.

SATD often remains unresolved, affecting maintainability.

Abstract

Self-Admitted Technical Debt (SATD) refers to the phenomenon where developers explicitly acknowledge technical debt through comments in the source code. While considerable research has focused on detecting and addressing SATD, its true impact on software maintenance remains underexplored. The few studies that have examined this critical aspect have not provided concrete evidence linking SATD to negative effects on software maintenance. These studies, however, focused only on file- or class-level code granularity. This paper aims to empirically investigate the influence of SATD on various facets of software maintenance at the method level. We assess SATD's effects on code quality, bug susceptibility, change frequency, and the time practitioners typically take to resolve SATD. By analyzing a dataset of 774,051 methods from 49 open-source projects, we discovered that methods containing SATD are not only larger and more complex but also exhibit lower readability and a higher tendency for bugs and changes. We also found that SATD often remains unresolved for extended periods, adversely affecting code quality and maintainability. Our results provide empirical evidence highlighting the necessity of early identification, resource allocation, and proactive management of SATD to mitigate its long-term impacts on software quality and maintenance costs.