The hottest Tech Debt Substack posts right now

Tech debt happens when we make bad decisions in software development. It can pile up, making fixing problems a big task for teams.
Doing hands-on work, or 'grunge work,' helps deepen understanding of the tech systems. It’s crucial for maintaining and improving technology.
To tackle tech debt effectively, it should be part of official job expectations. This way, everyone contributes and helps keep things running smoothly.

Tech gamble is about paying the price of hypothetical future tech debt upfront without proper data or insight, leading to waste and friction for the product.
Symptoms of tech gamble include complex technical solutions for simple problems, big bang improvement projects cancelled mid-execution, and rewriting systems without clear pragmatic checkpoints.
Tech debt is reactive, while tech gamble is proactive, with tech debt giving engineers a bad conscience and tech gamble representing naive ambition or malice.

Low investment TDD can help remedy teams overwhelmed with tech debt
Be conscious of your digital transformation while implementing low investment TDD
Consider participating in the TDD survey to share your adoption style or hesitancy

Google improved technical debt management after seeing survey results
Google measured technical debt through quarterly surveys and engineering log data
Google developed strategies like creating frameworks, maturity models, and tools to manage tech debt

Bad code wastes company resources by making the team spend more time on fixes. Refactoring can free up time for working on features.
Mildly bad code slows down new feature delivery. Refactoring can make the team faster and deliver more features in less time.
In data science projects, data quality issues can lead to excessive time spent on bug fixing, emphasizing the need for refactoring to increase efficiency.

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Consistency is crucial in various aspects like reliability and understanding code.
Introducing new patterns can be beneficial but may lead to tech debt and increased cognitive load.
Startups often struggle with consistency due to rapid changes, creating tech debt that can burden growth.

There are two main kinds of tech debt: cutting corners to move fast, and overcomplicating solutions.
YAGNI (You Ain't Gonna Need It) is important in software development to avoid unnecessary complexity.
Scar tissue in companies can slow down progress, so it's crucial to balance between speed and avoiding unnecessary complexity.

The post discusses inspiring a team overwhelmed with tech debt.
There is a free book club starting to read Implementing Lean Software Development.
Live streams hosted on Thursdays with the current theme focusing on DDD, this week specifically on Aggregates and mode.