Ward Cunniham, of Ward’s Wiki fame, was the coiner of the term “technical debt”. He made an interesting clarification in the following video:
According to his intention, the term is usually misused to reflect (and even encourage) the writing of sloppy code with the excuse that it will be refactored later. His original vision was more aligned with the XP style of simple design.
Doing bad code with the excuse of refactoring somewhere in the future is not technical debt we are going to pay, but rather asking money from loan mob sharks at an astronomic interest rate and the expenses of losing a few body parts in the way.
PS: It is funny how the metaphor was coined as an analogy that his boss could understand, but it has grown to be used and abused by everybody in the industry. Maybe that’s also related to the debt culture that has drawn our uneducated society into the current situation.
According to his intention, the term is usually misused to reflect (and even encourage) the writing of sloppy code with the excuse that it will be refactored later. His original vision was more aligned with the XP style of simple design.
Doing bad code with the excuse of refactoring somewhere in the future is not technical debt we are going to pay, but rather asking money from loan mob sharks at an astronomic interest rate and the expenses of losing a few body parts in the way.
PS: It is funny how the metaphor was coined as an analogy that his boss could understand, but it has grown to be used and abused by everybody in the industry. Maybe that’s also related to the debt culture that has drawn our uneducated society into the current situation.