Heard today, from devs working on an old & big project:
Hey, check that file at line 11108 and try…
That’s… breathtaking…
To be clear, they are talking about source code file from a project that is in continuous maintenance mode, with new functionality and bug fixes added with regularity.
Definition
Technical debit - obligation that a software organization incurs when it chooses a design or construction approach that’s expedient in the short term but that increases complexity and is more costly in the long term.
Technical debit by Steve McConnell:
If the debt grows large enough, eventually the company will spend more on servicing its debt than it invests in increasing the value of its other assets. A common example is a legacy code base in which so much work goes into keeping a production system running (i.e., “servicing the debt”) that there is little time left over to add new capabilities to the system.