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Comment by groestl | Hacker News Reader

Publicly self-admitted, in this case. Apart from that: if I inherit the code base of a bad programmer on my job, with a lot of technical debt, which part of it is a deliberate trade-off? It's still "time that must be paid back, with interest", but how it came to be is not part of the definition. The term is merely meant to help confer the problem to non-technical people, who _then_ can make a conscious decision to accrue technical debt. If they do so out of incompetence, it's still technical debt.

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> but how it came to be is not part of the definition

It's possible the people working at the time were not conscious of the trade-offs they were making. But it still happened and that's how it came to be.

> if I inherit the code base of a bad programmer on my job

It sucks, but it's almost guaranteed to be the case, to some degree. Think from the company perspective. You're thinking too much from your personal perspective, which is kind of irrelevant to the company. You're not using the term just for you.

> Think from the company perspective

I do, rest assured, part of this is my job description. I'm just bumping over the assertion that a deliberate trade-off is a prerequisite for technical debt. It's too specific a reason, and like saying your expenses are higher than your earnings, that's why you are in debt. But in reality, there are many more ways to end up in debt, spending more than you earn is just one possible cause.

If you identify technical debt, either hypothetical or existing, the term is an option to explain this to your superiors in a way they might understand. They'll know that they need to do regular small investments to pay it off, or chose an alternative option to avoid it. But that's all there is to it.

> in reality, there are many more ways to end up in debt, spending more than you earn is just one possible cause.

What are some others that don’t trivially collapse into exactly that?

Your bank goes bankrupt and you lose your funds. A good you purchased turns out to be stolen. You lose a lawsuit. You purchased a company in an equity deal and the company turned out to carry liabilities (just a note, I'm not from the US, so details might actually be different there).

Likewise, for technical debt: a dependency you relied upon is not maintained anymore. There is an exploit found, or regulation changes, and you realize you used the forbidden pattern everywhere.

Basically: earnings minus expenses are the operating result. Concious decisions to accrue technical dept would be the equivalent. But there are costs directly affecting equity as well, which can still result in debt.

I think the trade-off is at the company level. They hired a worse programmer to save money/time back then and accelerate development in the short term.

How would they be in a position to judge programmer competence? It might well be the person was hired based on being cheaper and/or a personal relationship (boss' nephew or manager's room-mate) but that is not necessarily an indication of how good they might be.

More often it's just a sign of a new company not knowing what they are doing and making unforced errors as a result, rather than a conscious debt/investment transaction.

Yes, that probably is more likely. I was merely trying to paint the decision makers in a good light to offer an alternative viewpoint. I usually default to the managerial incompetence view, wanted to have a change.

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