4 ms·

Once again, huh ? I call that raising one's potential in my comment, and that's not playing: in your own words, that's mastering new skills and trying new tech

by guylhem 13y ago

Once again, huh ? I call that raising one's potential in my comment, and that's not playing: in your own words, that's mastering new skills and trying new techniques. Besides the minor disagreement on which are the right terms to use, I agree with your conclusion : the article is poorly written, and fails to address the core issue about technical debt. It does not propose any simple solution, and can be summed up as "do some hacking, play and your technical debt with magically resolve itself" - to which I don't agree. (The analogy I made with "real life debt" was to insist on the reasons why an undirected approach to technical debt was not the best idea)

VikingCoder 13y ago
That's because the core of the article is NOT technical debt. (That's why you're so confused.) It's about something TOTALLY NEW he wants to discuss. And he's borrowing a term we're familiar with, and testing the waters to see if he can use a similar term to describe this new concept. Your response is so inappropriate, it's like if I responded to your post about technical debt with a rant about how your post didn't really address the problems of our NATIONAL debt, and didn't touch at all on our history of abandoning a gold standard, fiat currency, rentier capitalism, China playing with its currency valuation, and how "In God We Trust" offends atheists. NATIONAL debt has nothing to do with TECHNICAL debt has nothing to do with HACKING debt. "and your technical debt with magically resolve itself" NO. THE ARTICLE DOES NOT MAKE THAT CLAIM AT ALL.
- guylhem 13y ago
  The best I can imagine this notion of "hacking debt" is a "lack of hacking playtime", which the author belives may have bad consequences ; yet I deny that very notion. Financial debt exists. Technical debt exist too (especially if you make a living maintaining old code :-). Lack of training exist (skills deteriorate) Hacking debt ? Sorry, but once again "huh" ?? How is promoting a kind of glorified slacking helpful? You seem to have a far better understanding of it than I may have, so please describe this "totally new" concept termed "hacking debt", and also provide some proofs or links about the detrimental consequences it might have. Otherwise, I would like to take this opportunity to present you my new concern of "cinnamon-roll debt": I postulate that not frequently eating cinnamon rolls has bad consequences for a coder. Of course, I won't provide any proof. Also, I'll let people discuss that concept on HN to try and make some sense about it. I'll plug the term with A/B tested SEO words, like "technical debt". If it doesn't work, I'll present a new concept of "magical-rock debt" - about how not having a magical rock leads to coders burning out. PS- you're right, the article does not directly infers that playtime will solve technical debt. It just says "people become less effective and eventually burn out". However after reading it again, my impression is still that it is presented as if it could be helpful, and as if "hacking debt" was a real problem. IMHO it's not, and it's bad advice. Initially, I posted a TLDR with a simple analogy, then saw the downvotes and a lack of understanding, so I tried to provide more details to explain why I think the basic concept is wrong, besides the analogy. Yet, in the last 5 minutes I still see 4 downvotes. Never mind. I guess casting wild ideas is more recognised than examining how they could be wrong and proposing simpler fixes. There may be a market for lion-repelling magical rocks. I've got one and I've never even been chased by a lion! Also, it prevents burnout, and my productivity has never been higher! I'm out.
  - VikingCoder 13y ago
    You're acting like a jerk. This is a friendly forum for the exchange of ideas, not a peer-reviewed journal. You're proposing simpler fixes to a completely different problem. And you provided an INACCURATE TL;DR of a seven-sentence article. Hence, the downvotes. Product development yields things like better vacuum tubes. I whole-heartedly agree with the article's position that companies are foolish to demand that 100% of their developer's efforts are spent on product development. I think any company that tries to be innovative should encourage unstructured development. Some companies call them hack-a-thons. For one thing, they breed loyalty, camaraderie, and morale among the employees. Look up hack-a-thons, if you have any interest in retaining employees. With your attitude, I'm not so sure that applies to you.
    - bazillion 13y ago
      VikingCoder, you're my e-hero. The article tried to throw out an idea for everyone to just think about and go "Hmm...interesting..." (as with most articles on hacker news). It amazes me that even with such a low character count, it was still able to fly over some heads.
      - VikingCoder 13y ago
        ...thanks. :)

by guylhem 13y ago

VikingCoder 13y ago

That's because the core of the article is NOT technical debt. (That's why you're so confused.) It's about something TOTALLY NEW he wants to discuss. And he's borrowing a term we're familiar with, and testing the waters to see if he can use a similar term to describe this new concept. Your response is so inappropriate, it's like if I responded to your post about technical debt with a rant about how your post didn't really address the problems of our NATIONAL debt, and didn't touch at all on our history of abandoning a gold standard, fiat currency, rentier capitalism, China playing with its currency valuation, and how "In God We Trust" offends atheists. NATIONAL debt has nothing to do with TECHNICAL debt has nothing to do with HACKING debt. "and your technical debt with magically resolve itself" NO. THE ARTICLE DOES NOT MAKE THAT CLAIM AT ALL.

guylhem 13y ago
The best I can imagine this notion of "hacking debt" is a "lack of hacking playtime", which the author belives may have bad consequences ; yet I deny that very notion. Financial debt exists. Technical debt exist too (especially if you make a living maintaining old code :-). Lack of training exist (skills deteriorate) Hacking debt ? Sorry, but once again "huh" ?? How is promoting a kind of glorified slacking helpful? You seem to have a far better understanding of it than I may have, so please describe this "totally new" concept termed "hacking debt", and also provide some proofs or links about the detrimental consequences it might have. Otherwise, I would like to take this opportunity to present you my new concern of "cinnamon-roll debt": I postulate that not frequently eating cinnamon rolls has bad consequences for a coder. Of course, I won't provide any proof. Also, I'll let people discuss that concept on HN to try and make some sense about it. I'll plug the term with A/B tested SEO words, like "technical debt". If it doesn't work, I'll present a new concept of "magical-rock debt" - about how not having a magical rock leads to coders burning out. PS- you're right, the article does not directly infers that playtime will solve technical debt. It just says "people become less effective and eventually burn out". However after reading it again, my impression is still that it is presented as if it could be helpful, and as if "hacking debt" was a real problem. IMHO it's not, and it's bad advice. Initially, I posted a TLDR with a simple analogy, then saw the downvotes and a lack of understanding, so I tried to provide more details to explain why I think the basic concept is wrong, besides the analogy. Yet, in the last 5 minutes I still see 4 downvotes. Never mind. I guess casting wild ideas is more recognised than examining how they could be wrong and proposing simpler fixes. There may be a market for lion-repelling magical rocks. I've got one and I've never even been chased by a lion! Also, it prevents burnout, and my productivity has never been higher! I'm out.
- VikingCoder 13y ago
  You're acting like a jerk. This is a friendly forum for the exchange of ideas, not a peer-reviewed journal. You're proposing simpler fixes to a completely different problem. And you provided an INACCURATE TL;DR of a seven-sentence article. Hence, the downvotes. Product development yields things like better vacuum tubes. I whole-heartedly agree with the article's position that companies are foolish to demand that 100% of their developer's efforts are spent on product development. I think any company that tries to be innovative should encourage unstructured development. Some companies call them hack-a-thons. For one thing, they breed loyalty, camaraderie, and morale among the employees. Look up hack-a-thons, if you have any interest in retaining employees. With your attitude, I'm not so sure that applies to you.
  - bazillion 13y ago
    VikingCoder, you're my e-hero. The article tried to throw out an idea for everyone to just think about and go "Hmm...interesting..." (as with most articles on hacker news). It amazes me that even with such a low character count, it was still able to fly over some heads.
    - VikingCoder 13y ago
      ...thanks. :)