Technical Debt Is a Good Thing

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10 points·sjscott80··8 comments

>Knowing when to release a feature and go into technical debt is one part art and one part science.

let Ward Cunningham itself explain what he thinks about taking shortucts and calling it technical debt https://youtu.be/pqeJFYwnkjE?t=3m17s

Love the distinction he makes between technical debt (the codified difference of past and present understanding of the way the system should work) and just sloppy code.

In the regard, you can almost say that technical debt is inevitable since understanding of the problem and solution will likely evolve over time with more experience and user feedback.

Exactly and that why it's a powerful metaphor of how software development works, especially when explaining iterative programming.

I'll always take a stand when I see it to justify bad practices, bugs and sloppy coding.

Elsewhere in the video also explains why it's not about low quality code: because you need to have a good design and codebase for it to be refactorable, to maintain your development speed as your understanding of the domain/technology grows.

Summary: "Technical debt is not inherently evil. Putting a stop to all development just to fix all the technical debt doesn't make sense: instead, deal with it gradually."

Mr Goodwrench said "You can pay me now, or you can pay me later". Like maintaining a car, technical debt is always more expensive to pay later. It should be minimized, and what gets through the sieve should be dealt with as soon as possible.

Doesn't work with JS off. Renders as a blank page.

Turn off CSS too, works fine.

It is not good, it is inevitable.

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