Technical debt - was Re: datetime seems to be broken WRT timezones (even when you add them)

[Ethan Furman]

On 02/11/2020 04:38 PM, Michael Torrie wrote:

> It's all just different ways of accounting for the same things. In the
> olden days before the term "technical debt" was invented, we called this
> "total cost of ownership."

TCO is not a fixed number.  For example, if a loan is taken to help fund a project, then the "interest debt" will be a portion of the TCO, but its amount will vary depending on the interest rate: 15% will be more interest debt than 4%.  Likewise, the technical debt for a project will be higher or lower depending on the quality of the code written.

I think an oft overlooked aspect of technical debt is the affect on the programmers dealing with it:  frustration, burn-out, and job-seeking.

--
~Ethan~