{"id":41,"date":"2014-12-26T17:53:55","date_gmt":"2014-12-26T17:53:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.deltacfax.com\/?p=41"},"modified":"2016-04-15T13:45:16","modified_gmt":"2016-04-15T13:45:16","slug":"41","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.deltacfax.com\/?p=41","title":{"rendered":"Technical Debt"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>December 26, 2014<\/p>\n<p>You may have heard the term &#8216;technical debt&#8217;, but what does it really mean? As we explain in our classes, the effect of shortcuts taken now in order to meet a deadline are an IOU in the future. Technical debt has a <em>delayed feedback loop<\/em>. Heroic efforts in this release make it appear as if &#8220;Crash Scrum&#8221; was a success, but that IOU comes due in the next and all subsequent releases. This technical debt compounds over time, making the code base increasingly hard to navigate, slowing progress to a point where we declare the product &#8220;legacy&#8221; and start over with a &#8220;next generation&#8221; version. We do this because we believe we are smarter than our predecessors, who &#8216;obviously&#8217; coded like drunken weasels. Or did they? Everyone is rational in the constraints they find themselves in, and technical debt is a manifestation of the system that creates it. <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">We<\/span> create the system of incentives that creates legacy code by emphasizing short term delivery over robust automated tests, TDD, continuous integration and a myriad of other well known technical practices that mitigate technical debt.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/blog.deltacfax.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/Pogo-We-have-met-the-enemy-and-he-is-us.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-42\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.deltacfax.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/Pogo-We-have-met-the-enemy-and-he-is-us-197x300.jpg\" alt=\"Pogo-We-have-met-the-enemy-and-he-is-us\" width=\"197\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blog.deltacfax.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/Pogo-We-have-met-the-enemy-and-he-is-us-197x300.jpg 197w, https:\/\/blog.deltacfax.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/Pogo-We-have-met-the-enemy-and-he-is-us.jpg 279w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 197px) 100vw, 197px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Here is a wonderful article on technical debt that casts the argument in a completely different metaphor:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.higherorderlogic.com\/2010\/07\/bad-code-isnt-technical-debt-its-an-unhedged-call-option\/\">Bad Code Isn\u2019t Technical Debt, It\u2019s An Unhedged Call Option<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Want to see what technical debt looks like?<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/deltacfax.com\/timborn\/movies\/TechnicalDebtVisualized.mov\">Technical Debt Visualized<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>December 26, 2014 You may have heard the term &#8216;technical debt&#8217;, but what does it really mean? As we explain in our classes, the effect of shortcuts taken now in order to meet a deadline are an IOU in the future. Technical debt has a delayed feedback loop. Heroic efforts in this release make it &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.deltacfax.com\/?p=41\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Technical Debt<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.deltacfax.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.deltacfax.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.deltacfax.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.deltacfax.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.deltacfax.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=41"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blog.deltacfax.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":75,"href":"https:\/\/blog.deltacfax.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41\/revisions\/75"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.deltacfax.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=41"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.deltacfax.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=41"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.deltacfax.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=41"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}