The High Cost of Technical Debt

An excellent article which speaks the obvious but all too often falls on deaf ears.

My two cents:

1. Code reviews are to developers what proof reading is to writers. A person could read and re-read, numerous times, something which they have written and they might never see some basic grammatical error that they have made. But another person will spot the error without even trying on the first read. This is true in code as well. We often will not likely see that which we are convinced is not present - even when it is.

2. Everything I have ever learned I have learned through wood working. Specifically, take the time to plan ahead and invest in your designs before you even begin working. There are no short cuts in life nor in code. Every time that you try to take the quick path you will eventually pay it for two fold down the road. And your results will be imperfect, patched and less desirable than if you had avoided the problems by investing more thought and consideration at the start. I often say that the slow path is the quickest path.

I could go on (and have gone on) for hours on the topic of technical debt. But in the end the best approach is to invest heavily in good tools and processes as soon as possible. The investment always pays off and the best investments typically go entirely unnoticed because they eliminate problems so that you aren't even aware that they might have otherwise existed.

edit (adding a gripe)

"Universities don’t teach COBOL anymore–they rarely even teach C or C++–and good developers focus on keeping their skills up-to-date. Ss your technology infrastructure ages, it becomes increasingly difficult to find workers for the job."

I would choose a veteran C++ developer over an 'up-to-date' non C++ developer any day of the week. Also you made a typo in the quote. Code review! (^: