This brings us to an unfortunate truth: the story of this team fully paying off the debt like this is highly unusual.
I was so glad to read this. Up to this point, I was thinking "This is nothing like my experiences of technical debt". I've found that technical debt (including my own) accumulates for a combination of reasons: time pressures, lack of understanding, and -- if I'm honest -- laziness. The effects can take months or even years to be felt.
Also, technical debt is not just time wasted, but also a drain on developers' energy and enthusiasm. These effects can be even worse.
Thanks for the article. I'll make sure to check out the others you linked to.
I write and think a lot about software quality. From my experience unmitigated tech debt becomes almost sedementary in nature, forming natural buildup over time throughout a codebase and causing hacks to almost grow the architecture organically. Duplication tends to be rampant which in if itself is a huge cause for bugs, especially as new devs join code with many duplicates already and don't know all the places to change when making a new change.
From my experience unmitigated tech debt becomes almost sedementary in nature, forming natural buildup over time throughout a codebase and causing hacks to almost grow the architecture organically
I love that comparison. It becomes like a marsh that you have to wade through.
You're right, duplication is usually everywhere, even down to the duplicate comments and bugs. Learning about DRY was a lightbulb moment for me -- I instantly felt bad about all the copy-pasting code that I had done up til then.
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Great post!
I was so glad to read this. Up to this point, I was thinking "This is nothing like my experiences of technical debt". I've found that technical debt (including my own) accumulates for a combination of reasons: time pressures, lack of understanding, and -- if I'm honest -- laziness. The effects can take months or even years to be felt.
Also, technical debt is not just time wasted, but also a drain on developers' energy and enthusiasm. These effects can be even worse.
Thanks for the article. I'll make sure to check out the others you linked to.
I write and think a lot about software quality. From my experience unmitigated tech debt becomes almost sedementary in nature, forming natural buildup over time throughout a codebase and causing hacks to almost grow the architecture organically. Duplication tends to be rampant which in if itself is a huge cause for bugs, especially as new devs join code with many duplicates already and don't know all the places to change when making a new change.
I love that comparison. It becomes like a marsh that you have to wade through.
You're right, duplication is usually everywhere, even down to the duplicate comments and bugs. Learning about DRY was a lightbulb moment for me -- I instantly felt bad about all the copy-pasting code that I had done up til then.