Ask HN: Did you ever consciously create technical debt?
4 comments
Like "do something f--ed up because I wanted to?" (what I think most technical 'debt' is) or "make a rational calculation to take an action which will save effort tomorrow with a predictable future cost" (e.g. what you might get an MBA to learn to how do in corporate finance)
Who among us hasn't done dumb things at the direction of a manager, director or vice president?
By that definition, we do this all the time. I'd wager every feature release has some degree of "oh we can address that later if/when this takes off".
If you accidentally introduce bugs or regressions that gums up the works, that's not "debt", that's a mistake. If you choose the wrong thing and realize too late, that's not "debt", it's just bad decision making. If you choose wrong and are dissallowed from ever going back and cleaning up as agreed, that's not "debt", it's bad management.
We've got to stop using "tech debt" to mean "everything we don't like about software".