10 tips for reducing and then preventing tech debt
Technical debt might be the most widely relatable problem in software engineering. We collected ideas for paying it down and then keeping it at bay, with special attention to how this world is changing in the era of GenAI.
Technical debt might be the most widely relatable problem in software engineering. Even if you don’t work in software engineering, you can think of a problem in your life that keeps cropping up. Maybe it’s an issue with your car, or a leak in your roof, even an argument that recurs in a relationship. You know that you should invest the time and energy in finding a permanent fix, but keep avoiding that hard work, finding ways to patch things up that allow you to ignore the issue for a while, but just make the problem bigger and more complex over time. That’s what tech debt is for the world of software development. It’s no surprise then, that tech debt remains the number one frustration experienced by developers in our annual Dev Survey. It’s a common pain point because, arguably, technical debt is inevitable—some developers joke that all code is technical debt. Some say this with a straight face. When a developer writes code, they build in assumptions about best practices, the state of the application, and the best tools for the job. But those assumptions can change—developers are always learning, and in the face of new information, developers may find that the code they thought was good may be holding them back. Eventually, the debt can overwhelm the entire project, where all your time gets spent working around the issue instead of investing the time to fix it.
Sometimes teams intentionally take on technical debt. Like financial debt, technical debt can help a project get to market faster. Again, that debt will cause issues in your development cycle as devs work around the old choices. Think of it as interest: it’s the work you do to maintain the debt without eliminating it. If you let it go too long, then that maintenance work is all the developers will be doing—tech bankruptcy if you will.
