Sort-of memes that are cracking you up at the moment

What does it mean in engineering/construction? In software, it means all the crappy code you wrote in hurry to meet a deadline, which you always intended to go back and fix but never did, and now it's biting you in the arse.

I like that Goodwyn’s DOESN’T have an apostrophe

Ah, ok not too dissimilar.

Its either items of work that doesn't meet spec or assurance documentation that is not complete and you need to get sorted out before close-out (and final payment).

Amazing! His face 😆

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Exactly. It’s pure gold.

Looks more like Paul Daniels.

Please don't tell me ... yep paul daniels, dead, died 2016

Paul Daniels is telling Piers Morgan that he'll like his curry......but not alot.

Not too hot

I sometimes use construction metaphors to explain technical debt in the software engineering context. "You put a wonky stepladder in the place where the stairs should go, but now the deadline for completing the upper floor work is so tight that it's in constant use, and while it's slowing all that work down, nobody will let you pause things to put the stairs in." Much of the software that goes to market is wonky stepladders all the way down.

Much of the software that goes to market is wonky stepladders all the way down.

Placed upside-down

What is the solution to this? Good architecture from the outset? Being honest about the true cost? Shooting anyone who uses mvp?

convincing most of the stakeholders to go and get coffee for the team, to show theyre down to muck in, and then lock the doors while theyre out

Well AI and automated coding solutions will get better…

Tidying up mess is one of my favourite use cases for AI.

Well, taking enough time to get it right but then not being competitive because you took the time to get it right and the other guy didn't. AI will just make the time shorter but not change the other guy. When ai is at its peek, larger software firms will consist of one speed typer sat in a room typing ideas shouted at him as fast as he can. The fastest typer will be the gazillion dollar company.

To change this you need the other guy to agree to take his time too. Probably in a smokey backrooms hoping the FBI isn't listening. Along with other agreements about territory and pricing etc obvs. Light refreshments and hookers afterwards.

Undoubtably posted before but here’s a related meme.

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Being honest about the true cost?

It's taking the 'debt' bit of it seriously - it is by definition the financial cost of short term over long term decisions (including lack of decisions).

A proper analysis would include risk, that is both the chance of an outcome that requires the debt to be paid off, and the financial impact of not doing so.

Looking at it like that, it seems obvious that it should be on the balance sheet, which usually contains far more intangible element. Has anyone ever seen this done?

What is the solution to this?

Generally? Other than the digital tech revolution slowing down rather than exponentially expanding, there is none.

@steelspeed

Well AI and automated coding solutions will get better…

No. Mitigating technical debt requires understanding and insight. It's not about bugs. Most things labelled "technical debt" are entirely functional, just not a solution you want to have to live with long term.

Technical debt is not a bad thing in itself; the metaphor is useful because financial debt is something that people and companies thrive on, as long as it's acknowledged, logged and managed. Financial debt is bad when people hide it and/or don't keep it in check. Technical debt the same. The software/IT world has such a bad problem with unmanaged technical debt mostly because of the pressures I mentioned above, partly because most people (and managers) don't have the same basic understanding of tech that they do of their account balance. It's not hard to get people to see the shakey step ladder problem when you're actually talking about building a house. Trying to get them to see the real software engineering equivalents, and why they'll be a problem in the long term, is hard.

I guess we deserve this for having had a good page

I’m not a software engineer, but…

If the issue is ‘10 years ago we bodged something, now our whole system rests on it, but we can’t fix it because it costs too much’

Surely that cost is only gonna come down? Certainly in terms of time required.

Obviously AI isn’t a one click fix, but whether it’s finding the issues, fixing them, or testing them, it’s gonna speed it up?

Hah

Obviously AI isn’t a one click fix, but whether it’s finding the issues, fixing them, or testing them, it’s gonna speed it up?

It will speed things up, but it speeds up whoever is using it. If the person using it doesn't have the experience and judgement to know when it's not giving the best advice then they're going to trust it blindly and just make a mess of things even faster.

A shit analogy would be: powertools don't make everyone amazing at DIY, but they do enable the bodgers to make the same mistakes faster. Or make the people that wouldn't tackle a DIY project at all likely to have a go (and make a hash of it).

Surely that cost is only gonna come down? Certainly in terms of time required.

Systems almost never get smaller, but keep accreting new features.
So, typically the cost is only gonna go up, as more stuff comes to depend on the bodge and the precise details of all those dependencies are slowly forgotten or mis-remembered.

And while you could use AI to fix individual bits of code, that's never the bottleneck. You can't use it to analyse all the dependencies & their partially-documented functional requirements, plan and run integration tests, or figure out how to manage upgrades around whatever else is going on, and it won't help you figure out who needs to agree and get them all in a meeting.

Well this has fucked up my plan…
Replace everyone with AI, get rich

I’m still holding out that the one true use of AI will be to tidy my desktop.

The dump-everything-in-a-folder method only works for a few levels.