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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. Th
by 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 agoBad 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 agoSuppose 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 agoYes it is like debt, but not exactly. Analogies always break. Developing an app isn't like building a house, for example.