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Real debt has to be paid back. There is no requirement to ever pay down the technical debt. Therefore the analogy is misleading. I also think that the call opt

Real debt has to be paid back. There is no requirement to ever pay down the technical debt. Therefore the analogy is misleading. I also think that the call option is a bad analogy for similar reasons. In a call option you could be obliged to pay out. You never have to pay out with code. You can decide to get your developers to write code or not write code. No bailiffs will come knocking on the door. Technical drag coefficient may be a better analogy. For a car, the drag force increases as you speed increases. For code, the more features you want to add, bug you want to fix, etc. (i.e. the bigger your velocity) the more the TDC will kick in to slow you down. It may put a speed limit entirely on what you can do until you put work in to reduce it. Also you can write-off the car and invest in a new one. I have seen this many times of course - the 'new product' that is written that won't have all of the problems of the last one.

shitloadofbooks 12y ago
Real debt doesn't have to be paid down though. Eventually it compounds too far and the person/entity can't even meet the interest payments and goes bankrupt. There's plenty of analogies that can be made with technical debt. To really stretch the analogy, those same people often then end up in (technical) debt again a few years later when they repeat the same mistakes.
- bbcbasic 12y ago
  Bad code is kind-of analogous to debt, but not perfectly. Hence the confusion. In some ways it is worse than real debt - the compound interest rate is atrocious. Like a loan shark. But in some ways it is not as bad - you never are required by another party to pay back the debt. If you stop making money from the product, the debt is cancelled to $0. Real debt has to be paid down, unless there is collateral, but even then most lenders want to know when and how they are getting their money back.
  - dbdr 12y ago
    Suppose an opportunity comes up, but the technical debt in your software makes it exceedingly hard to respond to it. Either you still respond to it (with an obvious high cost), or you let the opportunity pass (and you "pay" the opportunity cost). So in a sense you can be forced to pay back your technical debt, if you include the "cost" of missed opportunities. But you are right that you always have the choice between those two, unlike real debt. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunity_cost http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunity_cost
    - bbcbasic 12y ago
      Yes it is like debt, but not exactly. Analogies always break. Developing an app isn't like building a house, for example.

shitloadofbooks 12y ago

Real debt doesn't have to be paid down though. Eventually it compounds too far and the person/entity can't even meet the interest payments and goes bankrupt. There's plenty of analogies that can be made with technical debt. To really stretch the analogy, those same people often then end up in (technical) debt again a few years later when they repeat the same mistakes.

bbcbasic 12y ago
Bad code is kind-of analogous to debt, but not perfectly. Hence the confusion. In some ways it is worse than real debt - the compound interest rate is atrocious. Like a loan shark. But in some ways it is not as bad - you never are required by another party to pay back the debt. If you stop making money from the product, the debt is cancelled to $0. Real debt has to be paid down, unless there is collateral, but even then most lenders want to know when and how they are getting their money back.
- dbdr 12y ago
  Suppose an opportunity comes up, but the technical debt in your software makes it exceedingly hard to respond to it. Either you still respond to it (with an obvious high cost), or you let the opportunity pass (and you "pay" the opportunity cost). So in a sense you can be forced to pay back your technical debt, if you include the "cost" of missed opportunities. But you are right that you always have the choice between those two, unlike real debt. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunity_cost http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunity_cost
  - bbcbasic 12y ago
    Yes it is like debt, but not exactly. Analogies always break. Developing an app isn't like building a house, for example.