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I have to disagree with this comment. Technical debt is sometimes the result of just one lone cowboy coder, but even then there's some responsibility across the

by nilkn 10y ago

I have to disagree with this comment. Technical debt is sometimes the result of just one lone cowboy coder, but even then there's some responsibility across the team because that means his or her code passed all reviews, i.e., nobody took ownership for the overall team's code quality and vetoed the bad code. Time constraints can certainly be relevant too. It's not always an artificial shift of blame. For instance, time constraints could be why the code passed review to begin with. And some programmers certainly do write worse code when they have to do it quickly. Typically, the code itself doesn't look all that bad in a vacuum, but it presents problems months down the line when a new feature needs to be added or an existing one changed in a non-trivial way. There was little forethought in its design. Or, let's just look at the ways you said you might write bad code: > I surely wrote tons of bad code because I didn't know how to do it better, or because I didn't have the requirements clear from the start, or because of bad design and planning In other words, these things can cause you to write bad code: 1. You just didn't know better. 2. Unclear requirements at the start. 3. Bad design and planning. In (1), you might realize after writing some code that you didn't quite know what you were doing and you should refactor it, but you're now under pressure from management to just get it out. Oops, no time to refactor. Now code that you know is bad is going into production, and it'll bite you in six months. For (2), the reason the requirements weren't clear is because not enough time was spent by management/product owners/designers on clarifying said requirements. For (3), it's the same thing -- bad planning is often the result of time constraints (notably, time constraints which may not be visible to you as a rank and file programmer).

Udik 10y ago
but it presents problems months down the line when a new feature needs to be added or an existing one changed in a non-trivial way. I think I have yet to see any software to which this doesn't apply sooner or later. While the whole point of "technical debt" is that it is something you're supposed to knowingly acquire because of time constraints. You're basically saying "we knew it was wrong, but they forced us to do it that way". While to me, most of the times, the truth is that you really didn't know. Yes, you coded in a hurry, but there is always a time constraint of some kind so that's no excuse. Somebody else in the same time would have done a better job. As for my points: if I realize I didn't know what I was doing, I always refactor the code. Committing code that you know to be conceptually wrong is just sloppy. And if I am under pressure by the management is because I spent time developing without understanding what I was doing; a better developer would have gotten it right at the first try, and there would be no technical debt. If the managers/ product owners didn't produce clear requirements, it's not a technical debt, it's a sloppy job on their part. If the planning was wrong, that's a sloppy job on the part of who had to do it. Responsibilities should be found and action should be taken. Saying "ah yes you know, we were under pressure so we (kind of naturally) accumulated this technical debt" is just a way to save everybody's face.
- nilkn 10y ago
  > And if I am under pressure by the management is because I spent time developing without understanding what I was doing; a better developer would have gotten it right at the first try, and there would be no technical debt. While this reasoning is probably not technically wrong, I'm not sure if it's relevant to the real world. You can always make an argument of form "there exists a developer who could have got this feature right on the first try, with very little time spent." This simply does not matter when you do not happen to have that developer on your team right at the moment. The nature of the work is that you will work on a variety of things, and you won't necessarily be the best in the world at every individual thing. You're inevitably going to encounter work that's challenging enough for you where you don't get it perfectly right on your first try. > If the managers/ product owners didn't produce clear requirements, it's not a technical debt, it's a sloppy job on their part. It's a sloppy job on their part, induced by time pressure, which produces technical debt. I feel like you're just playing with definitions here to avoid admitting that technical debt can come from poorly managed time pressure. > if I realize I didn't know what I was doing, I always refactor the code. All that tells me is that you've never been under a lot of time pressure. That's not a bad thing. It most likely means the management at your companies have been competent. But it doesn't mean that technical debt does not exist or cannot be induced from time pressure in other companies.
  - Udik 10y ago
    I guess that what I'm trying to say - and that got clearer to me while replying to other comments in this thread- is that it feels we're using the term "technical debt" as a way to avoid talking about personal skills or lack thereof, and to avoid admitting our or other people's faults. If I say that we need one more week of work on something because of technical debt due to the exceptional circumstances is one thing; if I say that it is because one of my colleagues didn't do his or her job properly, it's different. Remember that the business might have no clue of how long or difficult some tasks are and judge them only by the amount of work required. So a series of bad design decisions and consequent technical debt can give the impression of a very hard task on which everybody is working skillfully, while in fact it's an easy task with somebody that doesn't know how to do his job. As for your other points: maybe one of my team members produces consistently more technical debt than the others. Is it still technical debt? Manager or designers can be the source of time pressure for those down in the chain, because bad planning or decisions, made in absence of time pressure, can force others to work under pressure. Again, "technical debt" masks the real problem. I might not have worked in extremely high pressure environments - but I've surely worked in teams where we were leaving the office at ten or eleven pm every night for months on end just because demented design decisions had been made by the much respected solution architect.

by nilkn 10y ago

Udik 10y ago

but it presents problems months down the line when a new feature needs to be added or an existing one changed in a non-trivial way. I think I have yet to see any software to which this doesn't apply sooner or later. While the whole point of "technical debt" is that it is something you're supposed to knowingly acquire because of time constraints. You're basically saying "we knew it was wrong, but they forced us to do it that way". While to me, most of the times, the truth is that you really didn't know. Yes, you coded in a hurry, but there is always a time constraint of some kind so that's no excuse. Somebody else in the same time would have done a better job. As for my points: if I realize I didn't know what I was doing, I always refactor the code. Committing code that you know to be conceptually wrong is just sloppy. And if I am under pressure by the management is because I spent time developing without understanding what I was doing; a better developer would have gotten it right at the first try, and there would be no technical debt. If the managers/ product owners didn't produce clear requirements, it's not a technical debt, it's a sloppy job on their part. If the planning was wrong, that's a sloppy job on the part of who had to do it. Responsibilities should be found and action should be taken. Saying "ah yes you know, we were under pressure so we (kind of naturally) accumulated this technical debt" is just a way to save everybody's face.

nilkn 10y ago
> And if I am under pressure by the management is because I spent time developing without understanding what I was doing; a better developer would have gotten it right at the first try, and there would be no technical debt. While this reasoning is probably not technically wrong, I'm not sure if it's relevant to the real world. You can always make an argument of form "there exists a developer who could have got this feature right on the first try, with very little time spent." This simply does not matter when you do not happen to have that developer on your team right at the moment. The nature of the work is that you will work on a variety of things, and you won't necessarily be the best in the world at every individual thing. You're inevitably going to encounter work that's challenging enough for you where you don't get it perfectly right on your first try. > If the managers/ product owners didn't produce clear requirements, it's not a technical debt, it's a sloppy job on their part. It's a sloppy job on their part, induced by time pressure, which produces technical debt. I feel like you're just playing with definitions here to avoid admitting that technical debt can come from poorly managed time pressure. > if I realize I didn't know what I was doing, I always refactor the code. All that tells me is that you've never been under a lot of time pressure. That's not a bad thing. It most likely means the management at your companies have been competent. But it doesn't mean that technical debt does not exist or cannot be induced from time pressure in other companies.
- Udik 10y ago
  I guess that what I'm trying to say - and that got clearer to me while replying to other comments in this thread- is that it feels we're using the term "technical debt" as a way to avoid talking about personal skills or lack thereof, and to avoid admitting our or other people's faults. If I say that we need one more week of work on something because of technical debt due to the exceptional circumstances is one thing; if I say that it is because one of my colleagues didn't do his or her job properly, it's different. Remember that the business might have no clue of how long or difficult some tasks are and judge them only by the amount of work required. So a series of bad design decisions and consequent technical debt can give the impression of a very hard task on which everybody is working skillfully, while in fact it's an easy task with somebody that doesn't know how to do his job. As for your other points: maybe one of my team members produces consistently more technical debt than the others. Is it still technical debt? Manager or designers can be the source of time pressure for those down in the chain, because bad planning or decisions, made in absence of time pressure, can force others to work under pressure. Again, "technical debt" masks the real problem. I might not have worked in extremely high pressure environments - but I've surely worked in teams where we were leaving the office at ten or eleven pm every night for months on end just because demented design decisions had been made by the much respected solution architect.