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> Tech debt it any mess that makes it harder to improve the product. Technical debt is absolutely NOT just "any mess that makes it harder to improve the produ

> Tech debt it any mess that makes it harder to improve the product. Technical debt is absolutely NOT just "any mess that makes it harder to improve the product", not in its original formulation, and that's what GP comment is saying. Ward says directly, "A lot of bloggers at least have explained the debt metaphor and confused it, I think, with the idea that you could write code poorly with the intention of doing a good job later and thinking that that was the primary source of debt."[0] Technical debt here, and in the linked article, refers to specific, intentional choices about features and behavior. I've taking to call thing formulation "Classic" or "Traditional" technical debt, to differentiate it from the more widely used definition that includes "any mess". In other words, a mess is not a Technical Debt, or as Andy Cleff says[1], "you don’t have Technical Debt – you have a mess, you have cruft: An unpleasant substance, the result of shoddy construction, redundant, old or improperly written code." 0 http://wiki.c2.com/?WardExplainsDebtMetaphor http://wiki.c2.com/?WardExplainsDebtMetaphor 1 https://www.andycleff.com/2022/03/technical-debt-what-it-is-where-it-comes-from-how-to-pay-it-down/ https://www.andycleff.com/2022/03/technical-debt-what-it-is-...

IshKebab 3y ago
Well, it is that now because obviously that's the more useful and obvious meaning. What you mean is "Technical debt absolutely WASN'T just any mess...But now it is."
- cratermoon 3y ago
  > more useful More useful to whom?
  - wpietri 3y ago
    More useful to me, certainly. The debt metaphor is most useful when communicating with non-technical people who have at least some business/finance background, in that we need them to understand hidden "debt" in the technology, so that they make fewer bad choices about projects.
wpietri 3y ago
Cleff and I clearly agree that these things are all debt. And they're all in the technology implementation. I understand why Cleff wants a specific word for his sort of debt, and why he'd like to call tech debt. but I think that particular battle was lost more than a decade ago. The reason is that it's pretty much irrelevant afterwards. If I need to work with some code but that will be slower because it needs to be cleaned up, I don't particularly care why it's a mess. I'm not going to indulge in corporate archaeology to figure out exactly what the intent is. I also believe you're wrong about the linked article. For example: "Bringing that back to tech debt: a simple kind of high-interest short-term debt would be committing code without tests or documentation." Per Cleff, that isn't tech debt. (I suspect Ward would more flexible here.) But to this author and for the common usage, it is.

IshKebab 3y ago

Well, it is that now because obviously that's the more useful and obvious meaning. What you mean is "Technical debt absolutely WASN'T just any mess...But now it is."

cratermoon 3y ago
> more useful More useful to whom?
- wpietri 3y ago
  More useful to me, certainly. The debt metaphor is most useful when communicating with non-technical people who have at least some business/finance background, in that we need them to understand hidden "debt" in the technology, so that they make fewer bad choices about projects.

wpietri 3y ago

Cleff and I clearly agree that these things are all debt. And they're all in the technology implementation. I understand why Cleff wants a specific word for his sort of debt, and why he'd like to call tech debt. but I think that particular battle was lost more than a decade ago. The reason is that it's pretty much irrelevant afterwards. If I need to work with some code but that will be slower because it needs to be cleaned up, I don't particularly care why it's a mess. I'm not going to indulge in corporate archaeology to figure out exactly what the intent is. I also believe you're wrong about the linked article. For example: "Bringing that back to tech debt: a simple kind of high-interest short-term debt would be committing code without tests or documentation." Per Cleff, that isn't tech debt. (I suspect Ward would more flexible here.) But to this author and for the common usage, it is.