Reckless Debt
Explore the concept of reckless technical debt, where shortcuts and corner-cutting in code affect project quality and risk. Understand the importance of using automated code quality systems and standardized toolsets to detect and minimize debt. Learn strategies to prioritize and handle reckless debt effectively to maintain codebase health and reduce development risks.
What is reckless debt?
The other kind of technical debt doesn’t have anything to do with age or growth; it’s reckless debt. You can think about this as debt resulting from skipped steps. Here’s Joël Quenneville of Thoughtbot: “(Reckless) technical debt is described as taking shortcuts and cutting corners in code quality in order to speed up development.”
Identifying “Reckless” debt is challenging in itself. Nobody wants to cop to cutting corners, but we all do it. Kent Beck exhorts us to “make it work, make it right, then make it fast,” but many incentive systems encourage developers to just “make it work, make it work, make it work.”
Use automated code quality systems
One popular but incomplete way to deal with this is to use automated code ...