Technical Debt Is Cholera, not Quicksand
Technical debt (TD) – the compromises we make to get stuff out the door – is more often acknowledged and occasionally quantified. We categorize the inefficiency and difficulty working with it—the “interest” on the debt—as an unfortunate cost. Fixing technical debt (paying down the “principle”) competes for resources with new development and tangible defects
The common TD horror story is changing the behaviour of badly-coded modules1. For example, spending hours adding a simple variation to an existing implementation, which has never worked consistently (and never been fully tested – let alone built for extension or reuse), is dangerous as well as frustrating. Without tests or clear documentation, we are never sure what good behaviour is, so extending that behaviour is often an exercise in faith2
In analyzing technical debt, we tend to mythologize it:
- Technical debt is something...