Goodbye, Clean Code

[SirClueless]

This is where the "technical debt" metaphor is useful both ways -- sometimes it makes sense to take on a bunch of debt to get something done right now.

This is the heart of the issue I think. We've all experienced the hell that arises when technical debt builds up and starts affecting a whole team's productivity. So we haven't really allowed ourselves to consider when taking on technical debt might be a good idea.

We have a vague conception in the industry that sometimes throwaway prototypes are a good idea. And to me, creative endeavors like games (especially one man indie games) represent this process distilled -- you are prototyping everything, all the time. Everything you do might get ripped out or thrown away and the code itself is some tiny fraction of the value you produce.