- Debt is predictable: if I know the price in the future, and the rate of interest, I know the price now. If I knew what the cost is going to be in future, I could come up with today's price for the bad code and make perfect decisions.
- Unhedged options either blow up (incur a large future cost) or they expire worthless (I escape without paying anything). I don't know in advance which outcome will happen, so in today's price, I have to consider both possibilities and factor in the uncertainty.
That's a more accurate metaphor, but it's not usually better. There's two reasons to employ the "technical debt" metaphor - to get programmers to think about the issue, and to explain to external stakeholders why you need time for technical issues.
As a quick shorthand, "technical debt" works better than "technical unhedged call options" - and if you need to go back and explain what the hell is a call option, then you've lost your audience. Everyone understands the concept of debt already.
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 26.8 ms ] thread- Debt is predictable: if I know the price in the future, and the rate of interest, I know the price now. If I knew what the cost is going to be in future, I could come up with today's price for the bad code and make perfect decisions.
- Unhedged options either blow up (incur a large future cost) or they expire worthless (I escape without paying anything). I don't know in advance which outcome will happen, so in today's price, I have to consider both possibilities and factor in the uncertainty.
As a quick shorthand, "technical debt" works better than "technical unhedged call options" - and if you need to go back and explain what the hell is a call option, then you've lost your audience. Everyone understands the concept of debt already.