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

[Rhodri James]

On 12/02/2020 17:46, Python wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 12, 2020 at 01:16:03PM +0000, Rhodri James wrote:
>> On 12/02/2020 00:53, Python wrote:
>>> In pretty much every job I've ever worked at, funding work (e.g. with
>>> humans to do it) with exactly and precisely the resources required is
>>> basically impossible, and management prefers to underfund the work
>>> than to overfund it, for cost-savings reasons.  This basically means
>>> that any non-trivial work you do inevitably will become technical debt

>> s/become/accrue/.  The work itself isn't the debt, but its sub-optimality
>> creates debt (or future headaches, if you prefer to think of it that way).

> I think it's a purely semantic distinction without a practical
> difference...which was the point I was trying to make.  The work is
> the direct cause of the debt, and at the time it is performed the debt
> is realized.  Without the work, that particular debt is not incurred.
> You may have eliminated some old debt when the work is done, but your
> new debt replaces your old debt.  Depending on the resources you can
> devote, that debt may or MAY NOT be less than the other, and sometimes
> the truth of this can not be discovered until you're already knee deep
> in it.

Here's where the "purely semantic" distinction matters.  You are 
equating the work with the debt, but ignoring the benefit the work 
presumably brings (otherwise you wouldn't have done it at all).  Either 
you should be rolling it all together or separate both, surely.

-- 
Rhodri James *-* Kynesim Ltd