Ask HN: How should we rename “Technical Debt”?

2 points by kakwa_ 10y ago ↗ HN

First, an interesting video on the subject:

https://www.usenix.org/conference/lisa15/conference-program/presentation/dickson

This presentation raises an interesting issue which is that the term "Debt" is not necessarily viewed as a negative thing.

Debt can be seen as an opportunity as it's a mean to get capital to invest and grow, specially from a manager standpoint.

Even without these considerations, "Debt" remains something quite deterministic, you've to repay a fix amount every month plus interests, and at the end you're done with it (even if it's not 100% true).

What's behind "Technical Debt" is generally not like that. It's generally more something which might blow-up catastrophically one day, and there is generally no plan to reimburse it.

The term "Technical Risk" might be more accurate, but I personally find it to vague.

How should we rename "Technical Debt"?

Keep in mind that it should also speak to the none technical side.

2 comments

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samstave 10y ago ↗

Development atrophy

spotman 10y ago ↗

It's called technical debt because it's supposed to be paid down.

Real debt is too.

Both have their positives of course. Just because there is cases of technical debt gone bad and not being repaid, there is horror stories the same with real debt.

Software often needs this phase to get started, or maybe tech debt is incurred to put a fire out / solve an emergency.

If you are on a high functioning team or maintain software that has been around for a long time, technical debt does reduce. It's not fair to name it any different in my opinion.