Technical Debt

When developing software, there are several times at which you can choose among quick&ugly hack, which will incur higher maintenance headaches in the future, and slow&clean design. Usually, the slow&clean design is the way to go. But life is complicated and has a way to contrive an exception for each rule. Therefore, one should know how to manage the consequences of quick&ugly hacks.

This is the subject of technical debt, written about by people like Steve McConnell.

Roughly, you incur technical debt whenever you make a design or implementation decision which will require future rework or higher maintenance workload. The decision could be also something trivial such as not bothering to invest in documenting your present design, causing the future maintainer to waste time learning your design before modifying it.

Technical debt is written off when the software package in question is taken out of use due to replacement by a newer software package, the application area becoming irrelevant, or the company going bankrupt.

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Author: Omer Zak

I am deaf since birth. I played with big computers which eat punched cards and spew out printouts since age 12. Ever since they became available, I work and play with desktop size computers which eat keyboard keypresses and spew out display pixels. Among other things, I developed software which helped the deaf in Israel use the telephone network, by means of home computers equipped with modems. Several years later, I developed Hebrew localizations for some cellular phones, which helped the deaf in Israel utilize the cellular phone networks. I am interested in entrepreneurship, Science Fiction and making the world more accessible to people with disabilities.

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