[HN Gopher] Debts, Tech and Otherwise
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Debts, Tech and Otherwise
Author : BerislavLopac
Score : 30 points
Date : 2025-03-31 07:52 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (blogs.newardassociates.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (blogs.newardassociates.com)
| rkaregaran wrote:
| reforge has a great post where they classify the various types of
| debt in digital product development: maintenance debt, developer
| efficiency debt, stability debt, security debt, technical product
| debt, decision debt. https://www.reforge.com/blog/managing-tech-
| debt
| wrs wrote:
| The survivor bias section at the end is summed up by a favorite
| response to premature scaling work at a startup: "We would be
| very fortunate to have that problem."
| hnthrow90348765 wrote:
| Feels like we're stretching the metaphor when we apply it to
| things that won't necessarily compound in complexity or time
| required to fix it. This is often the case with technical stuff
| because things can depend on one another, but if you drop a bad
| process step, the time saved is probably linear since rarely do
| other teams need to change their process because you changed
| yours.
|
| Debt is scary as a metaphor because the interest compounds and
| the bank can repo things, but if you just owe a guy $10, he's not
| gonna come after you years later with a $300,000 bill. Non-
| compounding bad decisions are "you owe a guy $X" while the
| compounding ones are "debt".
|
| Maybe we should use "fees" and "debts" to differentiate these.
| dijksterhuis wrote:
| > Debt is an obligation that requires one party, the debtor, to
| pay money borrowed or otherwise withheld from another party,
| the creditor.
|
| > The term can also be used metaphorically to cover moral
| obligations and other interactions not based on a monetary
| value. For example, in Western cultures, a person who has been
| helped by a second person is sometimes said to owe a "debt of
| gratitude" to the second person.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt
|
| "debt" means owing something to someone. non-compounding debt
| is still debt. i don't pay back a "debt of gratitude" with
| compound interest. i also don't pay back friends I owe money to
| for a restaurant bill with compound interest, even though i was
| in debt with them when they covered my part of the bill.
|
| compounding/non-compounding is fine. don't over-complicate it.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| I can call an ink pen "a sword". I can even justify this by
| saying some nonsense like "pens are used to wage war". But if I
| rush headlong at a Samurai with nothing but a Bic Rollerball, I
| should not expect to come out of the encounter with all my limbs,
| much less the expectation of injuring the Samurai. Just calling
| it "a sword" doesn't mean it has anything to do with an actual
| sword.
|
| "Tech debt" isn't debt. It has nothing to do whatsoever with the
| concept of debt. What people mean when they say "Tech debt" is
| really "I'm putting off work I know I should be doing now, until
| later, and I'm doing something else instead that I know I'lll
| need to undo" That's not debt. That's procrastination. That's
| delaying the inevitable. It ain't debt.
|
| You don't pay off a car loan with procrastination. You don't
| decide to put off painting your house and then call that a loan.
|
| "Tech debt" has nothing to do with interest, with a lienholder, a
| creditor, a payment plan, etc. There is nobody to call in the
| loan. There is no incremental payment. There is no credit. There
| is nothing whatsoever to do with the entire _concept_ of debt,
| much less any of the actual practical real-world implications,
| actions, or actors, behind debt.
|
| Please let's stop perpetuating this cargo cult myth. There is no
| such thing as "tech debt". There is only compromises and
| procrastination, and justifying regrettable decisions by
| pretending there's a good rationale for them. There isn't.
| fluoridation wrote:
| Are you aware of this thing called a "metaphor"? Do you also
| find it aggravating when someone tells you about a program that
| is "running" because it's not using its legs to move along the
| ground? Or when someone says that they're going to "take a rain
| check" on an activity that doesn't have an entry fee?
|
| >You don't pay off a car loan with procrastination.
|
| Following the metaphor, the car loan itself would be the result
| of procrastination (i.e. you procrastinated when you decided to
| put off paying for the car by taking on debt).
|
| >You don't decide to put off painting your house and then call
| that a loan.
|
| I mean, I don't see what would prevent you from doing that, as
| long as everyone understands what you mean.
| normie3000 wrote:
| > Or when someone says that they're going to "take a rain
| check" on an activity that doesn't have an entry fee?
|
| Wait, what is a rain check?! Does it involve money?
| rileymat2 wrote:
| Having worked at jobs for an extended time, you see how it is
| not just redoing for the same price. It compounds, for example
| a DB schema, over time people build more and more on top of it
| with leaky abstractions.
|
| You end up rewriting many things.
| uuddlrlrbaba wrote:
| Tech debt is such a flawed concept. There is no world where
| requirements 10 years later are the same as the MVP, or even
| foreseeable. You can never pay it off. Software is always
| changing.
|
| Even if it were debt, debt is a tool to get you what you need
| today. And then you likely roll it into something down the line.
| Maybe you pay it off (and even then the asset still requires
| maintenance) Like a starter home, then upgrading to a larger home
| to start a family, etc, etc. Requirements and resources are in
| constant flux.
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