Member-only story
Keeping Track of your Technical Debt
The impact of technical debt
Over the years the concept of “technical debt” has become a phrase that can generate anxiety and a lack of trust, as well as setting up developers and their managers for failure. The metaphor might not be perfect ( Ralf Westphal makes a strong case for treating it like an addiction), but I feel it’s pretty apt if you think of the story of The Pied Piper of Hamelin — if you don’t pay the piper promptly for keeping you alive, he’ll come back to steal your future away.
Maybe I’m being a bit dramatic, but I value my time on this planet and over the course of two decades as a software developer in various sectors of the industry I have (along with countless others) paid with so much of my own precious lifetime (sleep hours, in particular) for others’ (and occasionally my own) quick fixes, rushed decisions and hacky workarounds that it pains me to even think about it.
It’s almost always worthwhile investing in doing things right the first time, but we rarely have the resources to invest and we are often unable to accurately predict what’s right in the first place.
So let’s at least find a way to mitigate the harm.
