I agree that all code is a liability, but not all of it is technical debt. Technical debt is a deliberate choice to do something now that realises value now in the knowledge that it will need to be paid for later.
Code that is deployed and generating revenue is an asset. Code that encapsulates valuable knowledge is a store of value. It is not all debt.
I think this article makes the case that it is valuable to think of all code as temporary, replaceable or disposable. Don’t be attached to code or a feature just because it already exists. The world changes, your company changes, your customers change and you change and even the best code responsible for your formerly most treasured feature may have to been thrown out at some point.
But I agree with @leeg that that does not make it ‘technical debt’, nor do I think it makes sense to expand the meaning of ‘technical debt’ to include this way of viewing your codebase
I agree that all code is a liability, but not all of it is technical debt. Technical debt is a deliberate choice to do something now that realises value now in the knowledge that it will need to be paid for later.
Code that is deployed and generating revenue is an asset. Code that encapsulates valuable knowledge is a store of value. It is not all debt.
I think this article makes the case that it is valuable to think of all code as temporary, replaceable or disposable. Don’t be attached to code or a feature just because it already exists. The world changes, your company changes, your customers change and you change and even the best code responsible for your formerly most treasured feature may have to been thrown out at some point.
But I agree with @leeg that that does not make it ‘technical debt’, nor do I think it makes sense to expand the meaning of ‘technical debt’ to include this way of viewing your codebase