Technical debt
Technical Debt
n. Inefficiency introduced to satisfy a requirement, because the resources (time, knowledge, solutions, funding) are not available.
I'm not sure where I saw this definition, but I loved it. It includes the motivations behind why we choose technical debt as humans.
You want a car, but you don't have $50,000 today. So, you take on debt and get the car today. Now you have the car, and you carry the debt. The debt doesn't actually hurt you. The debt only comes into play when you're making decisions.
Technical debt only hurts in a system that needs to make changes and respond to new priorities.
You need to get from point A to B.
You can build a bridge, or you can pay a toll.
You don't have time to build a bridge, or the right bridge-builder, or the steel at hand to build a bridge.
So you take the toll road – you’ve created technical debt.
That’s the debt, the cost of taking that toll now every time you need to get from point A to B.