@pluralistic Somebody finally invented "Tech Debt as a Service”.
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@pluralistic Somebody finally invented "Tech Debt as a Service”.
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@angusm @pluralistic "Tech debt as a service" is my new all-time favorite description of vibe coding.
Thank you.
#Coding #DevOps #developers
Code is a liability. Code's *capabilities* are assets. The goal of a tech shop is to have code whose capabilities generate more revenue than the costs associated with keeping that code running. For a long time, firms have nurtured a false belief that code costs less to run over time: after an initial shakedown period in which the bugs in the code are found and addressed, code ceases to need meaningful maintenance.
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After all, code is a machine without moving parts - it does not wear out; it doesn't even wear down.
This is the thesis of Paul Mason's 2015 book *Postcapitalism*, a book that has aged remarkably poorly (though not, perhaps, as poorly as Mason's own political credibility): code is not an infinitely reproducible machine that requires no labor inputs to operate.
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Rather, it is a brittle machine that requires increasingly heroic measures to keep it in good working order, and which eventually does "wear out" (in the sense of needing a top-to-bottom refactoring).
To understand why code is a liability, you have to understand the difference between "writing code" and "software engineering."
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"Writing code" is an incredibly useful, fun, and engrossing pastime. It involves breaking down complex tasks into discrete steps that are so precisely described that a computer can reliably perform them, and optimising that performance by finding clever ways of minimizing the demands the code puts on the computer's resources, such as RAM and processor cycles.
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