
This is what you sound like when refusing to address technical debt - henk53
https://twitter.com/Carnage4Life/status/585458646680670208
======
facepalm
Is "technical debt" not just "things you haven't done yet"? Or code for "hey
client, you'll have to pay us for x more months"?

~~~
weaksauce
It's poor decisions early in the project that make it harder and harder to add
features and fix bugs reliably and quickly. And, like debt, it has a
compounding effect upon the rest of the project.

~~~
sopooneo
I wouldn't say it's necessarily "poor" decisions, though it often is.

To extend the metaphor in the cartoon, maybe you had three minutes to produce
a demo cart and close the sale, and that was enough time to put holes in some
square tiles, but not to machine round wheels. In that case it's not a
technically _good_ choice to use square wheels, but it is arguably a prudent
one.

~~~
henk53
Indeed, technical debt can be there for whatever reason.

It could be that idiot coder who caused a lot of damage in the code before
someone finally checked what he did.

It could concern old code created by otherwise sensible programmers at a time
when it just wasn't clear how something should work.

It could be a matter of something that was once a good pattern, but by the
introduction of something newer has become technical debt (although you mostly
would call this just "old code").

And indeed, sometimes you have to hack something in because there's this
customer of manager who DEMANDS that something happens NOW.

In general technical debt is basically bad code that when left unfixed will do
more damage over time and will often end up costing you more than the times it
takes to just fix it.

~~~
manicdee
"I want results, not excuses!" "I am paying you for stuff that works, not
fancy acronyms!" "Let's do it the way that works today and we can sort out the
exceptions Tomorrow™"

------
jaredklewis
Funny. Also interesting the degree to which us programmers are obsessed with
this. Not technical debt itself, but technical debt the metaphor.

There seems to be an unlimited supply of blog posts outlining the finer points
of the metaphor like who is the bank, which project management concept
correlates to your credit rating, and so on.

~~~
davidgerard
Sysadmins too. I think it's because we're desperately seeking out the argument
that will _convince them to commit resources to clearing it down a bit_.

I have a rant I'm trying to anonymise about people who are natural-born tech
debt generators, all unaware.

