Step 1: Act with Prudence ~ Edward Garson
This is the first step towards gaining the Programming Enlightenment series.
“Whatever you undertake, act with prudence and consider the consequences” ~ Anon
“Doing it Right” or “Doing it quick”
We all know how a comfortable schedule turns into a pressure point at some time, be it exam, deadline of project or learning something a new. And, often we end up choosing between “Doing it Right” or “Doing it quick”.
“Doing it QUICK” is appealing with promises to fix it later, making a deliberate debt, known as Technical Debt.
What is Technical Debt?
- A wonderful metaphor developed by Ward Cunningham.
- It’s equivalent of financial debt, it incurs interest in development, since we chose “Doing it Quick” rather than “Doing it Right”..
- The interest might be additional rework, brittle code (software entropy) resulting in the inability to deliver in time.
Things to keep in mind
- It may be sensible in certain condition to incur technical debt with quick and dirty approach.
- In conditions where we incur technical debt, we mustn’t let the debt get out of control as the interest multiplies resulting in slow future developments.
TL;DR Pay off technical debt as soon as possible. It would be imprudent to do otherwise.
Go to the Second path .
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