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The cost of introducing and paying off tech debt has changed very, very much and I don't even know most of us have the time and space to think about what it means Tech debt has been so central to the software craft for decades, and now... how much does it matter?

I think it still matters a lot and a bunch of people are going to discover this soon.

Yes, I think this will be a question with a clear answer in 12-18 months.

You can incur tech debt while reading the code, the two things are unrelated. All this means is you can experiment faster and take on tech debt in service of some goal because it’s easier (read: cheaper) to fix in the future.

no one said you can't incur tech debt while reading the code claiming the two are "unrelated" is (excuse be but) preposterous

Sure they are. Incurring tech debt happens whether or not you read the code, when it’s done consciously, the decision is made outside of reading the code entirely. Even detecting most classes of it doesn’t require reading the code, observability, complexity checking, etc. have existed for years

claiming it's easier to fix in the future is also fairly moot, because you can't fix it if you don't know it's there, and you won't find (all of) it unless you read the code if your agent could find it, it wouldn't exist in the first place alas 😌