Hacker News Reader

Comment by drewrv | Hacker News Reader

Tech debt is one of the few metaphors I love because it’s so accurate. What a lot of engineers struggle with is that manageable levels of debt is fine for a business and in fact superior to being cash constrained.

Some forms of debt are a headache if the business goes south but tech debt can be ignored if the software project goes nowhere. So the “terms” are good.

Rather than complaining about tech debt, one should communicate the advantages of paying it down or the risks of taking on too much. But the metaphor works and simply referring to “debt” will not dissuade people because a bit of debt is fine.

View on HN

I think those who object to the metaphor do so because they interpret "technical debt" as "technical consumer debt". Consumer debt being a relatively benign form of debt, they don't believe it conveys the gravity of the matter at hand.

Consumer debt is mostly unsecured, almost perfectly fungible across term structures and refinanceable on a whim within a very competitive market of lenders. It's rare for it to be essential for a consumer to take on debt to continue to live[1] and there are typically safeguards in place to ensure consumers don't take on too much debt burden. The only debt that most consumers will come across that imposes any restrictions, or moves slowly, is a mortgage on a residential property. When we talk of "technical debt" we are talking of something has none of the nice properties of consumer debt. If I had sufficient cash I could pay off all my consumer debt within two minutes with a few taps of my phone screen.

On the other hand, I interpret "technical debt" to be akin to a complex structured financial product. Maybe there are convertability clauses between debt and equity, perhaps there is variability in the rates payable, or optionality that can be triggered by various real world events. This form of debt is not liquid, it is not refinanceable and it can be hard to find someone to take it off your hands for any amount of money! Nonetheless, sometimes it is essential for a business to take on this sort of debt to continue to thrive. That is an apt meaning for "technical debt" in my opinion.

[1] rarity depends on how socialised one's healthcare system is!

I agree, and I love the metaphor too, but you have to admit that something about the metaphor isn’t reaching peoples’ brains the way a good metaphor does.

A good litmus test here is to ask someone, “what if I told you that technical debt was originally a good thing?”... Like “Yes! Let’s go and get some technical debt, it will be great!” And so, can you understand why it might have started out that way?

People who really get the metaphor, can understand why it was originally a good thing to be desired. Because debt is a useful tool for the same reason, and if you can pursue what “being unable to take on technical debt” looks like, you can understand that it was a reaction to waterfall-style approaches.

But a solid 80-90% of people in tech don't understand how it could possibly be positive... “tech debt” is just a shorthand for the stuff that is causing development to go slower than you would have liked it to go.

The big difference between technical debt and actual debt in a money sense is that real debt is taken on consciously with an agreement betweenn debtor and lender. Because of this money debt can be worked into the planning and the risk can be calculated at the time the loan is initiated. Circumstances can change over time, but there is a bargain between the debtor and the lender. There are things like interest rates and collateral that are agreed upon when the debt is incurred.

Technical debt is by definition created to save time, so there is rarely an understanding of the risk that comes with the debt until the debt must be repaid. This means that the eventual payback can range from inconsequential to disasterous. The point is that the debtor won't know until it comes time to pay the debt back. Technical debt is often incurred in lieu of actual planning, not because a debtor is consciously and rationally weighing current reward against a future risk.

> People who really get the metaphor, can understand why it was originally a good thing to be desired. Because debt is a useful tool for the same reason

In that case, it is a very apt metaphor because most people naturally see debt as a bad thing. But with some nuanced thinking and deeper investigation you recognise that it can be useful sometimes.

I think they weren't saying that it's not an apt metaphor, but that it's not a good one, because now you first need to explain to people why regular debt is not necessarily bad, before being able to move on to your actual point that technical debt is also not necessarily bad.

Simply because it's a lot nicer to say than "my predecessor did dumb stuff". Especially when the predecessor is still around and outranks you.

The predecessor or old self did dumb stuff because of being pressured to deliver something quickly and had to cut corners. I don't see how he'd be offended that now it's time to go back and do it properly.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com