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> technical debt is the stuff you couldn't have avoided if you wanted to, because you didn't know then what you know now. I've always understood it as just the
by prodigal_erik 17y ago
> technical debt is the stuff you couldn't have avoided if you wanted to, because you didn't know then what you know now.
I've always understood it as just the opposite: the circumstances don't permit doing it right, so you do it badly knowing it'll cause problems, and the costs grow the longer you leave it unresolved. Debt is a metaphor for choosing to sacrifice your future self's resources, not just making mistaeks (even if they have the same result).
- DanielBMarkham 17y agoMe too. That's the way the term is commonly used. But if I understand this author correctly, that's not what the term originally meant.
- prodigal_erik 17y agoNow that I reread it, "[...] code that is clean enough to be able to refactor as you come to understand your problem" is a strange statement. Isn't refactoring just producing a cleaner version of the same solution?