Day over day, year over year, AI is driving down the cost of writing code. Economists have a word for what happens when stuff keeps getting cheaper: deflation. And you do things differently during deflation. (View Highlight)
Ward Cunningham coined the phrase “technical debt” in 1992. He was working on a financial application called WyCash and needed a metaphor to explain to his boss why they should spend time improving their code instead of shipping the next feature. For decades, the balance was simple: carry a little debt to move faster, but pay it down as soon as you can, or the accumulated mess will overwhelm and bankrupt you. (View Highlight)
Now economists have this thing they call deflation. For an economy, it’s a nightmare. Prices drop day after day, creating a psychological trap where consumers stop spending. Why buy a washing machine today when it will be cheaper tomorrow?1 The whole economy grinds to a halt. (View Highlight)
But what is a ‘trap’ for a nation is a miracle for a codebase. Usually, deflation is bad for debtors because money becomes harder to come by. But technical debt is different: you don’t owe money, you owe work. And the cost of work is what’s deflating. The cost to pay off your debt – the literal dollars and hours required to fix the mess – is diminishing. It is cheaper to clean up your code today than it has ever been. And if you put it off? It becomes cheaper still. This leads to a striking reversal: technical debt2 becomes a wise investment3. (View Highlight)
I am not a professional developer – I’m a marginally competent dabbler at best – but I can see the price tag changing. The cost to fix a messy codebase is plummeting. A refactor that took a month last year, takes a week today, and may be a few flicks of the fingers next year. (View Highlight)
This leads to a surprising conclusion for anyone managing a roadmap. You should be willing to take on more technical debt than you ever would have before4. Ship the prototype56. Skip the elegant abstraction. You are borrowing expensive human hours today, and you will get to pay them back with cheap AI hours tomorrow. (View Highlight)
But there is a second implication. The debt you already have – the spaghetti code that is actually slowing your team down right now – has never been cheaper to fix. Sure, you can put it off and it will get cheaper still, but you’ll suffer the friction along the way. So if it’s slowing you down? Throughout all of human history, there’s never been a better time to get rid of it. (View Highlight)
In this new world, procrastination reduces the price of perfection. Adjust your spending accordingly. (View Highlight)
