This is silly. Debt doesn't just have to be monetary. Or can we no longer say "I am in your debt" because we can't accurately estimate a monetary amount for that debt?
Technical debt is not debt; it’s not even technical
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Re: Technical debt is not debt; it’s not even technical
#12Surely this discussion will ultimately merely degenerate into prescriptivists vs descriptivists?
For my part, I use the term sparingly since I find I can easily use it as a catch-all thought-terminating cliche. That doesn’t mean it is useless. Just that it’s bad for me to use it.
People around me know to not let me get away with saying that.
Re: Technical debt is not debt; it’s not even technical
#13things for which analogies are made are not actually 100% the same as the thing the analogy says they are like, that's actually sort of the point.
and I say that as someone who doesn't much like analogies or metaphors for most code management issues as I think they often obfuscate the problems more than they illuminate.
Re: Technical debt is not debt; it’s not even technical
#14I agree with general sentiment that people mean different things by "technical debt" but don't buy the argument for the title. Article says: "Debt repayment has three properties that are straightforward to grasp — principal amount, interest rate, and term [...] when comparing technical debt, there is no agreement on the principal, [...] there is no concept of an interest rate [...] , term length isn’t a fixed concept…
Nice analysis, but I think you missed the most important difference between real debt and technical debt: with real debt you owe someone else; with technical debt you owe yourself.
When you take a loan out of your 401K, would you consider this "debt you owe yourself"?
Re: Technical debt is not debt; it’s not even technical
#15Technical debt is when you effectively borrow your future self's time and effort by taking a shortcut now that your future self has to work for to pay for it.
It is literally a debt. I dont know what the article is trying to say, it sounds to me like something my boss would say after a 2 hour meeting in a delirious caffeinated state, but thats probably just because I am not familiar with the corporate use of the term "technical debt".
Re: Technical debt is not debt; it’s not even technical
#16I agree with general sentiment that people mean different things by "technical debt" but don't buy the argument for the title. Article says: "Debt repayment has three properties that are straightforward to grasp — principal amount, interest rate, and term [...] when comparing technical debt, there is no agreement on the principal, [...] there is no concept of an interest rate [...] , term length isn’t a fixed concept…
Nice analysis, but I think you missed the most important difference between real debt and technical debt: with real debt you owe someone else; with technical debt you owe yourself.
Not to yourself; you often inherit the debt from previous developers (who may have left).
The project accrues technical debt.
And it owes it to the users.
Because, ultimately, that's who all these FTE hours (the currency borrowed!) are going to.
By taking a shortcut now, you make an implicit promise to the user to rewrite things later (on behalf of the project).
It's the user that suffers if the debt is not repaid (by experiencing bugs, missing features, slow releases, paying for higher headcount to fix bugs, etc).
Shortcuts don't become debt unless the user is affected. If it's stupid and it works, it's not stupid.
And it is the user that will dump your project if that debt is never repaid.
The debt analogy holds water.
Re: Technical debt is not debt; it’s not even technical
#17this article takes the metaphor way too seriously. At best, this is language we can use to help clarify what things we need to focus on and the trade off, most often useful when describing things to non technical people. At worse, it can be taken in such a way that we try to quantify the debt so it can be seen how badly things are screwed up. Its not a metric and doesn't really have a strong definition, it's more conceptual.
Re: Technical debt is not debt; it’s not even technical
#18Technical debt implies that it is a technical decision, when mostly it’s a business one.
Debt has a negative connotation, where as it’s more like a mortgage.
I always wonder if there’s an equivalent term in manufacturing.
Re: Technical debt is not debt; it’s not even technical
#19I tell all my coachees not to use "technical debt" outside of technology, if ever. Same goes for the phrase "refactoring", don't use it outside technology.
Re: Technical debt is not debt; it’s not even technical
#20This is silly. Debt doesn't just have to be monetary. Or can we no longer say "I am in your debt" because we can't accurately estimate a monetary amount for that debt?
Someone, to author: Thanks, dude, I owe you one!
Author: this has no clearly defined principal and interest, so "owing" is not a word you should use
Someone: ... Never mind