In episode 3 of "From Theory to Practice," Blameless’s Matt Davis and Kurt Andersen were joined by Liz Fong-Jones of Honeycomb.io and Jean Clermont of Flatiron to discuss two words dreaded by every engineer: technical debt. So what is technical debt? Even if you haven’t heard the term, I’m sure you’ve experienced it: parts of your system that are left unfixed or not quite up to par, but no one seems to have the time to work on.
Pretend your software system is a house. Tech debt is the leak in your sink that you’ve haven’t gotten around to fixing yet. Tech debt is the messy office you haven’t organized in a while. It’s also the new shelf you bought but haven’t installed. To-do’s quickly build up over time. Even if certain tasks are quick, there are just so many of them that it’s tough to know where to start.