This is a terrible article. The awfulness starts at the title, and continues throughout.
What's wrong with the title: he asserts that "we" all defined technical debt incorrectly, when (in my experience) there's no meaningful agreement on that term. It's one of those terms that, if it's used, requires follow-up to be sure that both parties are talking about the same thing. The author even acknowledges this lack of agreement, but he asserts that we're all using it wrong.
The author then proposes a definition: "any code that decreases agility as the project matures".
Sorry, but there's no polite way to say this: that is, quite possibly, the most useless definition of technical debt I've ever heard. Every line of code decreases agility in one direction or another, every step forward is a step past some other opportunity. Thus, a definition that conflates necessary progress with actual problems is worse than useless. It's harmful. And frankly, I have trouble imagining an intelligent person who would use it. At this point I'm attacking the author a bit, but at this point the author has attacked the entire world a bit, so it seems fair.
The author has made clear that he thinks he's smart, that we're dumb, and he's figured out things we can't understand. So gross.
Captain know-it-all then proclaims, in bold font no less, that "The Most Important Thing is Getting the Thing to the User". No. Fucking. Shit. We fucking know that. We get that. Please don't do this shit where you conflate the whole damned world with the one guy in your office who you're passive-aggressively railing against with this awful awful screed.
Then this just gets into total dishit territory. We're supposed to not worry about getting everything right, but god forbid we need some migrations along the way, no... those aren't acceptable to this bloviation blowhard, we must get them all right on version one.
I now have a better understanding why BigCommerce is about the fifth company I think of when I think of places to host a shop. They're a fifth place company that hires fifth place management.
And Shaun, if I'm correct that you wrote this because you're tired of hearing your team talk about technical debt, then you are truly a horrible manager and you should just fucking quit. I'm not a person who typically advocates quitting, but this seems like nothing more than a passive-aggressive attack on one or more of your engineers who mentioned technical debt or code quality more often than you'd prefer.
And if you really just thought this was brilliant insight: you're an idiot. You used a dumb definition of tech debt to justify an argument that showed you don't understand the original metaphor. You are an impressively stupid man.
What's wrong with the title: he asserts that "we" all defined technical debt incorrectly, when (in my experience) there's no meaningful agreement on that term. It's one of those terms that, if it's used, requires follow-up to be sure that both parties are talking about the same thing. The author even acknowledges this lack of agreement, but he asserts that we're all using it wrong.
The author then proposes a definition: "any code that decreases agility as the project matures".
Sorry, but there's no polite way to say this: that is, quite possibly, the most useless definition of technical debt I've ever heard. Every line of code decreases agility in one direction or another, every step forward is a step past some other opportunity. Thus, a definition that conflates necessary progress with actual problems is worse than useless. It's harmful. And frankly, I have trouble imagining an intelligent person who would use it. At this point I'm attacking the author a bit, but at this point the author has attacked the entire world a bit, so it seems fair.
The author has made clear that he thinks he's smart, that we're dumb, and he's figured out things we can't understand. So gross.
Captain know-it-all then proclaims, in bold font no less, that "The Most Important Thing is Getting the Thing to the User". No. Fucking. Shit. We fucking know that. We get that. Please don't do this shit where you conflate the whole damned world with the one guy in your office who you're passive-aggressively railing against with this awful awful screed.
Then this just gets into total dishit territory. We're supposed to not worry about getting everything right, but god forbid we need some migrations along the way, no... those aren't acceptable to this bloviation blowhard, we must get them all right on version one.
I now have a better understanding why BigCommerce is about the fifth company I think of when I think of places to host a shop. They're a fifth place company that hires fifth place management.
And Shaun, if I'm correct that you wrote this because you're tired of hearing your team talk about technical debt, then you are truly a horrible manager and you should just fucking quit. I'm not a person who typically advocates quitting, but this seems like nothing more than a passive-aggressive attack on one or more of your engineers who mentioned technical debt or code quality more often than you'd prefer.
And if you really just thought this was brilliant insight: you're an idiot. You used a dumb definition of tech debt to justify an argument that showed you don't understand the original metaphor. You are an impressively stupid man.