Re:Technical Debt is Not a Bad Thing
by j_baker on Wednesday February 12, 2014 @08:11PM
(#7228694)
Technical debt isn't necessarily bad. However, people who take joy in pointing this out usually aren't the ones who end up paying it down every day. It's usually a (sometimes wannabe) pointy-haired boss who's just trying to crack the whip harder. The key is realizing that technical debt must be paid at some point. Saying "technical debt isn't bad!" is oftentimes an excuse to avoid paying it down.
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Is it considered better practice to pay the debt down little by little, or all at once (as in rewrite or feature freeze)?
There aren't many managers around that are going to feature freeze to pay off technical debt. In reality it has to be paid off as you come across it i.e. you're working on a new feature that depends on some code with technical debt. This seems fine as after all, there's not much point paying off technical debt if it isn't slowing down development.