arXiv subjects

Ahmed Musa Awon

Publications and source records attributed to Ahmed Musa Awon.

4 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

The Nature of Technical Debt in Research Software

Research software (also called scientific software) is essential for advancing scientific endeavours. Research software encapsulates complex algorithms and domain-specific knowledge and is a fundamental component of all science. A pervasive challenge in developing research software is technical debt, which can adversely affect reliability, maintainability, and scientific validity. Research software often relies on the initiative of the scientific community for maintenance, requiring diverse expertise in both scientific and software engineering domains. The extent and nature of technical debt in research software are little studied, in particular, what forms it takes, and what the science teams developing this software think about their technical debt. In this paper we describe our multi-method study examining technical debt in research software. We begin by examining instances of self-reported technical debt in research code, examining 28k code comments across nine research software projects. Then, building on our findings, we interview research software engineers and scientists about how this technical debt manifests itself in their experience, and what costs it has for research software and research outputs more generally. We identify nine types of self-admitted technical debt unique to research software, and four themes impacting this technical debt.

cs.SE↗

arXiv2025

Exploring Scientific Debt: Harnessing AI for SATD Identification in Scientific Software

Developers often leave behind clues in their code, admitting where it falls short, known as Self-Admitted Technical Debt (SATD). In the world of Scientific Software (SSW), where innovation moves fast and collaboration is key, such debt is not just common but deeply impactful. As research relies on accurate and reproducible results, accumulating SATD can threaten the very foundations of scientific discovery. Yet, despite its significance, the relationship between SATD and SSW remains largely unexplored, leaving a crucial gap in understanding how to manage SATD in this critical domain. This study explores SATD in SSW repositories, comparing SATD in scientific versus general-purpose open-source software and evaluating transformer-based models for SATD identification. We analyzed SATD in 27 scientific and general-purpose repositories across multiple domains and languages. We fine-tuned and compared 10 transformer-based models (100M-7B parameters) on 67,066 labeled code comments. SSW contains 9.25x more Scientific Debt and 4.93x more SATD than general-purpose software due to complex computations, domain constraints, and evolving research needs. Furthermore, our best model outperforms existing ones. This study uncovers how SATD in SSW differs from general software, revealing its impact on quality and scientific validity. By recognizing these challenges, developers and researchers can adopt smarter strategies to manage debt and safeguard the integrity of scientific discovery.

cs.SE↗

arXiv2025

Objectifying the Subjective: Cognitive Biases in Topic Interpretations

Interpretation of topics is crucial for their downstream applications. State-of-the-art evaluation measures of topic quality such as coherence and word intrusion do not measure how much a topic facilitates the exploration of a corpus. To design evaluation measures grounded on a task, and a population of users, we do user studies to understand how users interpret topics. We propose constructs of topic quality and ask users to assess them in the context of a topic and provide rationale behind evaluations. We use reflexive thematic analysis to identify themes of topic interpretations from rationales. Users interpret topics based on availability and representativeness heuristics rather than probability. We propose a theory of topic interpretation based on the anchoring-and-adjustment heuristic: users anchor on salient words and make semantic adjustments to arrive at an interpretation. Topic interpretation can be viewed as making a judgment under uncertainty by an ecologically rational user, and hence cognitive biases aware user models and evaluation frameworks are needed.

cs.CL↗

arXiv2024

AI Tool Use and Adoption in Software Development by Individuals and Organizations: A Grounded Theory Study

AI assistance tools such as ChatGPT, Copilot, and Gemini have dramatically impacted the nature of software development in recent years. Numerous studies have studied the positive benefits that practitioners have achieved from using these tools in their work. While there is a growing body of knowledge regarding the usability aspects of leveraging AI tools, we still lack concrete details on the issues that organizations and practitioners need to consider should they want to explore increasing adoption or use of AI tools. In this study, we conducted a mixed methods study involving interviews with 26 industry practitioners and 395 survey respondents. We found that there are several motives and challenges that impact individuals and organizations and developed a theory of AI Tool Adoption. For example, we found creating a culture of sharing of AI best practices and tips as a key motive for practitioners' adopting and using AI tools. In total, we identified 2 individual motives, 4 individual challenges, 3 organizational motives, and 3 organizational challenges, and 3 interleaved relationships. The 3 interleaved relationships act in a push-pull manner where motives pull practitioners to increase the use of AI tools and challenges push practitioners away from using AI tools.

cs.SE↗