11/29/2023 0 Comments Architectural spike meaningHis explanation supports McCormick’s claim that bad code does not qualify as technical debt. A mess is always a loss.”īy his definition, taking on technical debt is always intentional and strategic. It’s always based on laziness and unprofessionalism and has no chance of paying off in the future. The decision to make a mess is never rational. They are risky, but they can be beneficial. Technical debt decisions are made based on real project constraints. In an impassioned post, a long-time software development consultant, Uncle Bob writes “ A mess is not a technical debt. Sometimes when trying to define a somewhat abstract concept it can be useful to understand what it is NOT. You can accomplish more today than you normally could, but you end up paying a higher cost later,” they write in a Hackernoon article. It’s called technical debt because it’s like taking out a loan. “Technical debt happens when you take shortcuts in writing your code so that you achieve your goal faster, but at the cost of uglier, harder to maintain code. Gaminer’s explanation of what they call the fallacy of technical debt focuses heavily on the concept of paying interest later. Note how I didn’t say bad code (as that is often subjective) or broken code.” He suggests that true technical debt is always intentional and not accidental. Shaun McCormick’s definition of technical debt focuses more on the consequences in the long term, “I view technical debt as any code that decreases agility as the project matures. His definition is straightforward, “technical debt is any code added now that will take more work to fix at a later time-typically with the purpose of achieving rapid gains.” It Has Consequences Much like someone may take out a loan on a property as a means of getting into a booming real estate market before being priced out, technical debt is often used as a tool for “getting ahead.” Trey Huffine, founder of gitconnected explains the role of technical debt through the lens of a startup. We can see several themes that can help us build a concrete definition for technical debt. Over time, several highly-nuanced explanations have evolved but at a high level. Various people have developed their own personal definitions for it over the years. Since metaphors are inherently abstract, the true definition of technical debt is up to interpretation. Is There a Simplified Definition of Technical Debt? I thought borrowing money was a good idea, I thought that rushing software out the door to get some experience with it was a good idea, but that of course, you would eventually go back and as you learned things about that software you would repay that loan by refactoring the program to reflect your experience as you acquired it.”įor an in-depth look at technical debt, watch this video: ![]() “With borrowed money, you can do something sooner than you might otherwise, but then until you pay back that money you’ll be paying interest. Years later, Cunningham described how he initially came up with the technical debt metaphor: Later, it would become the subject of countless academic studies, debates, and panel discussions. He didn’t realize at the time, but he had coined a new buzzword in the software community. He first used the metaphor to explain to non-technical stakeholders at W圜ash why resources needed to be budgeted for refactoring. Technical debt is a phrase originally coined by software developer, Ward Cunningham, who in addition to being one of 17 authors of the Agile Manifesto, is also credited with inventing the wiki. But what exactly is technical debt anyway? And why do we call it that? It is referred to as a catchall that covers everything from bugs to legacy code, to missing documentation. Also known as design debt or code debt, the phrase (or more accurately, the metaphor) is widely used in the technology space. If you’ve been in the software industry for any period of time, chances are you’ve heard the term “technical debt”. In other words, it’s the result of prioritizing speedy delivery over perfect code. Technical debt (also known as tech debt or code debt) describes what results when development teams take actions to expedite the delivery of a piece of functionality or a project which later needs to be refactored.
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