The woes of high debt has always been my argument against all debt since very early experiences as a programmer where I had to recover from a high debt situation. I thought I was being clever in pointing out a cost that is overlooked by divorced-from-details managers and blew it out of all proportion. What I forget, and is the main point I take from this essay, is that the cost of keeping a low debt increases exponentially as the debt decreases.
> I think we could advance the state of the art if were to find a way to quantify engineering debt. As a starting point I suggest a ratio of line changes aimed at servicing vs. line changes aimed at creating new features. If 100 lines of new functionality require 10 lines of base code changes, the debt is low. The opposite is true, the debt is high
That’s the thing with this debt. You can only quantify it once you’ve paid it back because its quantity is predicated on the cost of paying it back, which differs depending on your aptitude for doing so. And because it’s invisible neurotic programmers like me can start to actively fear it, leading to poor decisions.
> I think we could advance the state of the art if were to find a way to quantify engineering debt. As a starting point I suggest a ratio of line changes aimed at servicing vs. line changes aimed at creating new features. If 100 lines of new functionality require 10 lines of base code changes, the debt is low. The opposite is true, the debt is high
That’s the thing with this debt. You can only quantify it once you’ve paid it back because its quantity is predicated on the cost of paying it back, which differs depending on your aptitude for doing so. And because it’s invisible neurotic programmers like me can start to actively fear it, leading to poor decisions.