Ward Cunningham introduced the metaphor underlying the term technical debt in a 1992 experience report, where he described how his company incrementally extended a piece of financial software:
Shipping first time code is like going into debt. A little debt speeds development so long as it is paid back promptly with a rewrite. Objects make the cost of this transaction tolerable.
The danger occurs when the debt is not repaid. Every minute spent on not-quite-right code counts as interest on that debt. Entire engineering organizations can be brought to a stand-still under the debt load of an unconsolidated implementation, object- oriented or otherwise.
https://c2.com/doc/oopsla92.html
via
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=10109339 (PDF)
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