KeynotesAPSEC 2026

Intelligent Software Development Through the Lens of Complex Systems: Opportunities and Challenges

Abstract: This talk examines the opportunities and challenges of intelligent software development through the lens of systemic complexity. We argue that systemic complexity is the true watershed for AI coding. While AI has demonstrated remarkable capabilities in generating code for small-scale, well-defined tasks, its effectiveness drops sharply when applied to large-scale, long-evolving enterprise systems. The root cause lies not in model limitations alone, but in the fundamental nature of software as a complex system. Such systems consist of massive components with nonlinear interactions and emergent behaviors that defy prediction. They also carry unique historical trajectories shaped by years of adaptive evolution and countless trade-off decisions. These systems embody a form of tacit knowledge that cannot be extracted from source code alone; it resides in design rationales, evolutionary paths, and the collective memory of development teams. To bridge this gap, we introduce the concept of Code Digital Twin, a knowledge infrastructure that constructs a conceptual layer above the physical codebase. This layer captures high-level design intent, business semantics, and evolutionary history, while maintaining bidirectional traceability with the implementation. We further discuss the emerging paradigm of Harness Engineering, which provides systematic approaches to guide and govern AI agents through feedforward constraints and feedback sensors. We also outline a roadmap for evolving software development practices in the AI era. Our central thesis is this: for complex systems, AI serves as an enabling advisor, not the ultimate decision-maker. Human judgment, architectural reasoning, and a deep respect for systemic complexity remain irreplaceable.

Prof. Xin Peng is a Professor and Vice Dean of the College of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence at Fudan University, China. He is a Distinguished Member of the China Computer Federation (CCF), Deputy Director of the CCF Technical Committee on Software Engineering, and a Standing Committee Member of the CCF Open Source Development Committee. He also serves as a Co-Editor of the Journal of Software: Evolution and Process, and is an Editorial Board Member for several leading journals, including ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology (TOSEM), Empirical Software Engineering (EMSE), Automated Software Engineering, and the Journal of Software (in Chinese). Professor Peng’s research interests primarily focus on intelligent software development, testing, and operation, and agent-based intelligent systems. His research has received numerous prestigious awards, including the IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering (TSE) Best Paper Award, the ICSM Best Paper Award, ACM SIGSOFT Distinguished Paper Awards, and the IEEE TCSE Distinguished Paper Award. He served as the Organizing Committee Chair and Program Committee Co-Chair for the CCF ChinaSoft conference in 2022 and 2023. He also regularly serves as a Program Committee member for premier software engineering conferences, including ICSE, FSE, ASE, ISSTA, ICSME, and SANER.

What Quantum Computing Means for Software Engineering

Abstract: The advances in the field of quantum computing over the last two decades have not gone unnoticed. Industry has begun to focus on this technology to tackle problems that have remained beyond the reach of classical computing. On the one hand, quantum hardware is progressing steadily, building computers with increasing resources and greater reliability. On the software side, it is becoming clear that classical software engineering procedures are neither sufficient nor adequate to address the specific challenges of quantum software.
This talk reviews some of the most active research directions in the emerging field of Quantum Software Engineering (QSE). All of them share the common goal of providing engineering processes that enable the development of quantum software that is reliable, repeatable, reusable, and maintainable. However, the relevance of QSE goes beyond the adaptation of existing software engineering techniques to a new computational paradigm. Quantum computing opens a wide range of research challenges that directly concern the Software Engineering community: how to specify and validate quantum software requirements; how to design and architect hybrid quantum–classical systems; how to test, debug, and verify programs whose behaviour is inherently probabilistic; how to manage the lifecycle of quantum applications; and how to build abstractions, tools, and methodologies that make quantum computing usable beyond a small group of specialists.
From this perspective, quantum computing should not be seen only as a new application domain, but as an opportunity to rethink some of the foundations of Software Engineering in the context of a radically different form of computation. For researchers with a background in classical Software Engineering, this emerging field offers a particularly promising space in which their expertise in modelling, architecture, testing, processes, reuse, and maintainability can make a decisive contribution to the development of practical and trustworthy quantum software systems.

Juan Manuel Murillo is a Full Professor of Software Engineering at the University of Extremadura, Spain, and a founding member of the Quercus Software Engineering Group, which he currently leads. He is also President-elect of SISTEDES, the Spanish Society of Software Engineering and Software Development Technologies, which brings together the national academic and industrial research communities in Software Engineering. Since 2012, his work has contributed to concepts such as the Internet of People and People as a Service, anticipating ideas later consolidated in fog and mist computing, with applications mainly in health and ageing. In recent years, he has become actively involved in the Quantum Software Engineering community, participating in the organization of several international events, including IEEE Quantum Computing and Engineering (QCE), and delivering keynote talks at different conferences. He is also a member of the IEEE Quantum Technical Community Executive Committee. His current research interests focus on the disciplined development of quantum software, with particular emphasis on hybrid quantum–classical systems and programming abstractions that support their engineering.

Prof. Dr. Ir. Eko Kuswardono Budiardjo, M.Sc. is a senior Professor and prominent lecturer at the Faculty of Computer Science, Universitas Indonesia (FASILKOM UI). He is widely recognized for his pioneering work in Software Engineering, Requirements Engineering, and Enterprise Architecture.