Conversation

Notices

1. Embed this notice
   Sara Joy :happy_pepper: (sarajw@front-end.social)'s status on Thursday, 11-Apr-2024 02:17:13 JST Sara Joy :happy_pepper:

   • Thomas 🔭🕹️

   @thomasfuchs 🤔

   I've come to understand it less as the need to upgrade something that works fine, and more about coding stuff sloppily, but letting it go through anyway because it's only MVP or somesuch.

   • Embed this notice
     Mike Loukides (mikeloukides@hachyderm.io)'s status on Thursday, 11-Apr-2024 02:18:15 JST Mike Loukides

     • Thomas 🔭🕹️

     @thomasfuchs As I understand it, the metaphor was originally intended to include the idea that you have to take on debt to do big projects, just like you have to take out a mortgage to buy a house. But that's largely been forgotten. And when you take out a mortgage, you're not OMG, I OWE MONEY, THIS IS TERRIBLE--you think about the interest rates, whether there are better things you can do with the money you have, etc.

   • Embed this notice
     Sara Joy :happy_pepper: (sarajw@front-end.social)'s status on Thursday, 11-Apr-2024 02:19:26 JST Sara Joy :happy_pepper:

     • Thomas 🔭🕹️

     @thomasfuchs Huh. Then they're just wrong 😅

   • Embed this notice
     Benjamin Pollack (bmp@hachyderm.io)'s status on Thursday, 11-Apr-2024 02:37:30 JST Benjamin Pollack

     • Thomas 🔭🕹️

     @thomasfuchs FWIW, I actually like it specifically because debt is not always bad. E.g., I don't own my house; I have a mortgage. But that's completely fine, given my circumstances.

     Just like with real debt, with tech debt, I mostly look at how much "interest" we're paying. How much are we paying with dev speed? with compatibility? with security? If the answers to all of those are low to nil, it's fine debt, just let it be. If they're high, might be time to pay down the debt.

   • Embed this notice
     Benjamin Pollack (bmp@hachyderm.io)'s status on Thursday, 11-Apr-2024 02:40:40 JST Benjamin Pollack

     • Thomas 🔭🕹️

     @thomasfuchs I've encountered that usage, but thankfully sparingly. I'm with you that it's a bad take

   • Embed this notice
     Oliver Jensen (ojensen@hachyderm.io)'s status on Thursday, 11-Apr-2024 10:15:35 JST Oliver Jensen

     • Thomas 🔭🕹️

     @thomasfuchs I think this is actually a feature of the analogy. If you have a low interest rate and you can earn more from the capital than the debt is costing you, you hold off paying down the debt. Debt is not a de-facto bad thing. Using a credit card is taking on debt. But just like technical debt, you need to be strategic about when and what you take on, and when you commit to paying it off.

   • Embed this notice
     Dan Hulton (danhulton@hachyderm.io)'s status on Thursday, 11-Apr-2024 12:46:51 JST Dan Hulton

     • Thomas 🔭🕹️

     @thomasfuchs I tend to think of technical debt as very specific non-optimal choices -- that you expect to have to revisit later at a cost -- in order to make a deadline deemed to be more important than the time loss. It's a deliberate trade-off.

     The intent is important. Sloppy programming or poor planning is something else entirely.