I recently finished writing my master's thesis on "the impact of self-admitted technical debt on software quality" [2], we use the same approach this article advocates to identify this type of technical debt, which we call "self-admitted technical debt" (SATD) [1].
We examined the impact of SATD on software quality for forty open-source projects. To measure this, we took into account three criteria commonly associated with quality: (i) on the file level, the relationship between defects and SATD; (ii) on the change level, the potential of SATD to introduce future defects and (iii) the complexity SATD changes impose on the system. The results of our study indicate that: (i) SATD and defects exhibit no correlation at the file level, (ii) SATD changes make the system more susceptible to future defects than non-SATD changes do and (iii) SATD changes are more difficult to perform on the system. [2] (an abbreviated version [3])
There are more patterns to identify technical debt than "TODO, FIXME or XXX". You can find the rest of the patterns here [1].
It is very interesting to see developers confessing their workarounds and hacks through source code comments, as it can alert later contributors to the technical debt induced.
We examined the impact of SATD on software quality for forty open-source projects. To measure this, we took into account three criteria commonly associated with quality: (i) on the file level, the relationship between defects and SATD; (ii) on the change level, the potential of SATD to introduce future defects and (iii) the complexity SATD changes impose on the system. The results of our study indicate that: (i) SATD and defects exhibit no correlation at the file level, (ii) SATD changes make the system more susceptible to future defects than non-SATD changes do and (iii) SATD changes are more difficult to perform on the system. [2] (an abbreviated version [3])
There are more patterns to identify technical debt than "TODO, FIXME or XXX". You can find the rest of the patterns here [1].
It is very interesting to see developers confessing their workarounds and hacks through source code comments, as it can alert later contributors to the technical debt induced.
References:
[1] http://das.encs.concordia.ca/uploads/2016/01/Potdar_ICSME201...
[2] https://www.scribd.com/document/345197805/Sultan-Wehaibi-mas...
[3] http://das.encs.concordia.ca/uploads/2016/01/Wehaibi_SANER20...