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I'm throwing up my hands and giving up on this metaphor. It was a nice try, but from what I can see, the heat-to-light ratio is way out of whack. Every discussi

I'm throwing up my hands and giving up on this metaphor. It was a nice try, but from what I can see, the heat-to-light ratio is way out of whack. Every discussion of "technical debt" either gets bogged down in definitional issues ("is there a difference between debt and a mess?", "Is it debt if it was planned but not if it kind of happened by accident?") or it gets bogged down in overextension as people try to figure out the metaphorical equivalent of "interest" or "refinancing" or "bankruptcy". As if any of these concepts necessarily applied. I think I'll just go back to the plain words. There is good code, bad code, and ugly code. There is flexible code, and brittle code. There are planned short-term jury-rigs, unplanned baked-in design mistakes, and fragile temporary solutions that never get fixed because the company pivots before it matters.

salvadors 15y ago
I think the metaphor is mostly lost on people who have never taken a business loan. Generally banks don't like lending money to companies purely to cover normal operational expenses. If you simply have cash-flow issues then a line of credit/overdraft is better. If you can't meet your costs out of income, then you want to either reduce costs or find an additional equity injection, not take a loan. Traditionally loans are for things that will grow the business, with a clear path to being able to repay it out of the additional income generated as a result. Obvious examples are buying expensive new equipment to let you produce something you sell at a greatly reduced cost, or opening new retail outlets. The business world has a fairly well developed set of nuances around whether the debt a company has is good debt or bad debt. AIUI Ward's original point was simply that the "all debt is bad" approach doesn't work in business, and shouldn't be applied in so blunt a manner to technology either. Sometimes it's worth going into some debt now to achieve a future benefit. But, a business should be just as careful with its technical debt as its financial debt: only going taking it on with a clear (and well measured) path out again. But, as you say, like pretty much any metaphor, stretch it too far, and it falls apart.

salvadors 15y ago

I think the metaphor is mostly lost on people who have never taken a business loan. Generally banks don't like lending money to companies purely to cover normal operational expenses. If you simply have cash-flow issues then a line of credit/overdraft is better. If you can't meet your costs out of income, then you want to either reduce costs or find an additional equity injection, not take a loan. Traditionally loans are for things that will grow the business, with a clear path to being able to repay it out of the additional income generated as a result. Obvious examples are buying expensive new equipment to let you produce something you sell at a greatly reduced cost, or opening new retail outlets. The business world has a fairly well developed set of nuances around whether the debt a company has is good debt or bad debt. AIUI Ward's original point was simply that the "all debt is bad" approach doesn't work in business, and shouldn't be applied in so blunt a manner to technology either. Sometimes it's worth going into some debt now to achieve a future benefit. But, a business should be just as careful with its technical debt as its financial debt: only going taking it on with a clear (and well measured) path out again. But, as you say, like pretty much any metaphor, stretch it too far, and it falls apart.