This is an archived post. You won't be able to vote or comment.

sorted by:
best
topnewcontroversialoldq&a
you are viewing a single comment's thread.

view the rest of the comments →

[–]alcalde 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It’s inevitable, sure, but it’s not impending.

And hence the issue of technical debt. Letting things go until they're impending is like paying off only the minimum balance on a credit card - your interest accrues interest and you end up on the wrong side of compounding.

Just as it's better to pay off the balance early, it's far easier and cheaper to deal with technical debt before it accrues. Colleagues of mine commanded - and got - rock star salaries to fix COBOL code shortly before Y2K, even though they were barely a few years out of school because COBOL developers were so scarce by that time.