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Comment by majc2 | Hacker News Reader

If you want to scare them talk about it being a technical credit card - pay that debt back regularly and try and clear it as quickly as you can.

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Ehhh, the analogy doesn't hold totally because you might not have to pay it back. In that case you're ahead. FTA:

Call options are a better model than debt for cruddy code (without tests) because they capture the unpredictability of what we do. If I slap in an a feature without cleaning up then I get the benefit immediately, I collect the premium. If I never see that code again, then I’m ahead and, in retrospect, it would have been foolish to have spent time cleaning it up.

That's the home run point: you might not have to pay it back. That is exactly why the debt or credit card analogy doesn't hold. An uncovered call is exactly the correct metaphor. This isn't even high finance we're talking about, this is fundamental options stuff. I'm not sure I understand the resistance to using the uncovered call terminology as opposed to the highly innaccurate (but more Main Street comprehensible) "debt" analogy. Debt (aside from bankruptcy ALWAYS has to be repaid. Yet we all know that technical debt doesn't always have to be repaid. Debt is a terribly imprecise way of thinking about it.

> I'm not sure I understand the resistance to using the uncovered call terminology as opposed to the highly innaccurate (but more Main Street comprehensible) "debt" analogy.

Specifically, it is because the managers I am attempting to communicate with understand the concept of "debt" and do NOT understand the concept of "uncovered calls". I work at a bank and VERY few of the managers I need to explain things to would really understand uncovered calls. I would guess that people at other kinds of employers may find it even worse.

Debt doesn't always have to be repaid. It can be refinanced and carried indefinitely. People do it all the time with mortgages. I know people who have lived in the same house for 15 years, but due to frequent refinancing and cashing out equity they still have 29 years left on their mortgage.

Debt is a useful term, an "uncovered call" is a "debt security" http://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/debtsecurity.asp

So porque no los dos?

I agree, the analogy is imperfect, because you don't pay interest unless you need to extend or maintain the code. It's only useful in a world where the codebase in question is under ongoing development, but those are the situations where I've used it. Naked calls work fine as an analogy in the case you describe.

Agreed. Startups have very high capital costs. Even a usurious credit card can look lo-cost. It's not very scary at all. It's like writing Little Red Riding Hood with a "big bad groundhog."

The counter also assumes all code lives in a vacuum - that cleaning that particular code will not impact any other parts of the code base. I find this to be very far from the truth. Often cleaning up one area will lead to abstractions that can have an effect far beyond the original code.

>Ehhh, the analogy doesn't hold totally because you might not have to pay it back. In that case you're ahead.

The analogy totally holds. If you don't pay back financial debts (e.g. airlines going through chapter 11 and shedding their pension obligations), then you ALSO come out ahead.

Right, if you quit the project and leave the sponsors/employers holding the bag.

An unhedged call option is something the actor knows is risky. Bad code may seem perfectly safe at the time.

Reminds me of "Worry is interest paid in advance on a debt that may never come due."

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