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Technical debt by itself is a bad thing. It's just that, much as with actual debt, it's often worthwhile to accept a little bit of bad if you get a lot of good

Technical debt by itself is a bad thing. It's just that, much as with actual debt, it's often worthwhile to accept a little bit of bad if you get a lot of good in exchange. I was going to write that there's no reason you'd want financial debt qua financial debt, and that's sort of true but I realized that credit ratings complicate things. Sometimes an important part of what you're getting in exchange for the debt (and its repayment) is capacity for borrowing more when it first-order matters in the future, by way of establishing a reputation for being able to handle debt correctly. Mapping this back to software seems interesting. I can't think of a parallel for credit reporting agencies, but it's certainly the case that a team might be more (or less) willing to take on technical debt to meet the schedule desired by a manager or a PM if there is a history of allowing them room to pay down the debt later (or failing to).

perl4ever 6y ago
>I was going to write that there's no reason you'd want financial debt qua financial debt Under what circumstances? What about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_preference https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_preference ?
- dllthomas 6y ago
  You may want to take on debt, but it's the money you get in the short term that you want (or the stuff you spend it on, really). The debt itself, you'd prefer not to have, if everything else could be equal.
lowdose 6y ago
> was going to write that there's no reason you'd want financial debt qua financial debt. Yes you actually do want debt because it is tax shield. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_shield https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_shield
- dllthomas 6y ago
  That certainly makes it more attractive to make deals that involve taking on debt. But note that it's a deduction, so the amount you pay to service the debt will always be more than the taxes you save. If you could simply not have the debt anymore, you would be better off. You still don't want the debt itself.

perl4ever 6y ago

>I was going to write that there's no reason you'd want financial debt qua financial debt Under what circumstances? What about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_preference https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_preference ?

dllthomas 6y ago
You may want to take on debt, but it's the money you get in the short term that you want (or the stuff you spend it on, really). The debt itself, you'd prefer not to have, if everything else could be equal.

lowdose 6y ago

> was going to write that there's no reason you'd want financial debt qua financial debt. Yes you actually do want debt because it is tax shield. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_shield https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_shield

dllthomas 6y ago
That certainly makes it more attractive to make deals that involve taking on debt. But note that it's a deduction, so the amount you pay to service the debt will always be more than the taxes you save. If you could simply not have the debt anymore, you would be better off. You still don't want the debt itself.