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139

Your Engineers Aren't Lazy, Your Codebase Is Punishing Them (piechowski.io)

submitted 17 hours ago by codeinabox@programming.dev to c/programming@programming.dev

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A client’s team spent a full week adding a CSV export to their admin panel. Two engineers, clear requirements, maybe a day of actual work. The rest of the time went to understanding existing code well enough to change it safely. That’s what I call codebase drag: when the codebase makes every task take longer than it should. It doesn’t show up in any dashboard or sprint report.

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[–] beeng@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

Not sure. Something can be written fine and technically good but it's difficult to get started in.. Its a headwind.. Ie drag.

I don't see that as debt?

[–] firelizzard@programming.dev 8 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

Anything that makes the codebase harder to maintain than it should be is technical debt.

[–] beeng@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago) (1 children)

Whilst true, I was not talking about maintenance...

Rather "getting started in" ie onboarding.

[–] firelizzard@programming.dev 2 points 5 hours ago

“How easy is it to onboard?” is functionally equivalent to “How easy is it to understand?”. The biggest factor in maintainability almost always boils down to how easy it is to understand. So, difficult to onboard almost certainly means difficult to maintain, and thus is tech debt.