
The High Cost of Technical Debt - samullen
http://pixelatedworks.com/articles/the-high-cost-of-technical-debt/
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mamaniscalco
An excellent article which speaks the obvious but all too often falls on deaf
ears.

My two cents:

1\. Code reviews are to developers what proof reading is to writers. A person
could read and re-read, numerous times, something which they have written and
they might never see some basic grammatical error that they have made. But
another person will spot the error without even trying on the first read. This
is true in code as well. We often will not likely see that which we are
convinced is not present - even when it is.

2\. Everything I have ever learned I have learned through wood working.
Specifically, take the time to plan ahead and invest in your designs before
you even begin working. There are _no_ short cuts in life nor in code. Every
time that you try to take the quick path you will eventually pay it for two
fold down the road. And your results will be imperfect, patched and less
desirable than if you had avoided the problems by investing more thought and
consideration at the start. I often say that the slow path _is_ the quickest
path.

I could go on (and have gone on) for hours on the topic of technical debt. But
in the end the best approach is to invest heavily in good tools and processes
as soon as possible. The investment always pays off and the best investments
typically go entirely unnoticed because they eliminate problems so that you
aren't even aware that they might have otherwise existed.

 _edit_ (adding a gripe)

"Universities don’t teach COBOL anymore–they rarely even teach C or C++–and
good developers focus on keeping their skills up-to-date. Ss your technology
infrastructure ages, it becomes increasingly difficult to find workers for the
job."

I would choose a veteran C++ developer over an 'up-to-date' non C++ developer
any day of the week. Also you made a typo in the quote. Code review! (^:

