Technical Debt
The implied cost of additional rework caused by choosing an easy (limited) solution now instead of using a better approach that would take longer.
定义
Technical debt is a metaphor comparing software development decisions to financial debt. Like financial debt, tech debt accumulates "interest" — the longer it remains, the more effort it takes to fix. Common sources include: quick fixes, missing documentation, outdated dependencies, lack of tests, and copy-pasted code. Not all tech debt is bad; sometimes it's a deliberate trade-off to ship faster.
为什么重要
Studies show developers spend 33% of their time dealing with technical debt. Unmanaged tech debt slows feature development, increases bug rates, and makes onboarding new developers harder. Companies like Stripe and Shopify dedicate 20-30% of engineering time specifically to paying down technical debt.
示例
A team hardcodes configuration values to meet a deadline. This creates technical debt that must be repaid later by refactoring to use environment variables and a proper config system.