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I think a lot of the technical debt I’ve acquired in the past is due to having to rapidly apply business logic to existing systems for customers. This is typica

I think a lot of the technical debt I’ve acquired in the past is due to having to rapidly apply business logic to existing systems for customers. This is typically not the type of work that I feel excited about. I do, to some extent, feel excitement about reducing technical debt. I’d assume that other engineers appreciate taking the time to “clean” outside of writing net new features. I could be totally off base, but I do think it would be interesting to see an environment that was purely mood driven development.

ganzuul 5y ago
I think you have a solid incentive structure there so PMDD (Purely Mood Driven Development) is only a matter of implementation. Sort of like the job isn't done until you are putting away your tools.
raunometsa 5y ago
I love your term "mood driven development" (or MDD for short?). I know Gumroad is doing this to at least some extent: "At the end of the day there's a lot of emotion that goes into Gumroad, that's not dissimilar from an art project. We sometimes pick what's fun and feels good to work on! We love listening to creators! We don't do tons of data analysis to decide what's worth working on." – @shl, founder I wrote about it more on my post "Startups should be more like art projects" (link somewhere in the comments already, won't add it here again not to spam)
- layer8 5y ago
  > mood driven development (or MDD for short) Somehow I don’t think this will be a successful marketing term for that methodology. Or maybe we’ll end up getting Mood Master certifications, daily mood-ups, mood retrospectives, and mood boards where we move tasks around. ;)
leetrout 5y ago
Have you ever heard the phrase "man your battle stations"? There is another type of station: cleaning stations. And they make a call "all hands man your cleaning stations". Every sailor has an area they are responsible for cleaning and they go there and clean. I've pitched the same for codebases the past few places I have worked: everyone has a cleaning station in the code base and once every few weeks they go to that part of the code and fix or identify and document needed improvements. Making it a routine action that keeps up with incremental changes and ideally lowers effort on keeping a code base clean.
- kortex 5y ago
  This is a great suggestion. My manager hates the term "tech debt", because it's too vague and everyone has their own idea of what constitutes tech debt. But what we can enumerate are things like heavily intertwined logic and IO, difficult to follow business logic, poor documentation, long functions, etc.

ganzuul 5y ago

I think you have a solid incentive structure there so PMDD (Purely Mood Driven Development) is only a matter of implementation. Sort of like the job isn't done until you are putting away your tools.

raunometsa 5y ago

I love your term "mood driven development" (or MDD for short?). I know Gumroad is doing this to at least some extent: "At the end of the day there's a lot of emotion that goes into Gumroad, that's not dissimilar from an art project. We sometimes pick what's fun and feels good to work on! We love listening to creators! We don't do tons of data analysis to decide what's worth working on." – @shl, founder I wrote about it more on my post "Startups should be more like art projects" (link somewhere in the comments already, won't add it here again not to spam)

layer8 5y ago
> mood driven development (or MDD for short) Somehow I don’t think this will be a successful marketing term for that methodology. Or maybe we’ll end up getting Mood Master certifications, daily mood-ups, mood retrospectives, and mood boards where we move tasks around. ;)

leetrout 5y ago

Have you ever heard the phrase "man your battle stations"? There is another type of station: cleaning stations. And they make a call "all hands man your cleaning stations". Every sailor has an area they are responsible for cleaning and they go there and clean. I've pitched the same for codebases the past few places I have worked: everyone has a cleaning station in the code base and once every few weeks they go to that part of the code and fix or identify and document needed improvements. Making it a routine action that keeps up with incremental changes and ideally lowers effort on keeping a code base clean.

kortex 5y ago
This is a great suggestion. My manager hates the term "tech debt", because it's too vague and everyone has their own idea of what constitutes tech debt. But what we can enumerate are things like heavily intertwined logic and IO, difficult to follow business logic, poor documentation, long functions, etc.