zlacker

>If the porcelain top on my toilet breaks, I'm not in debt because I choose not to replace it.

you do know what "tech debt" is, right? In your metaphor, your top may have 0% debt because only you use the bathroom and no one cares, or it has a potentially high debt in that you receive more germs from your bathroom and get more sick, costing you money to buy medicine to keep you not sick. The debt is objective but we live in a world where finding that objective measure is infeasible.

to use your cheese metaphor, it's more like boldly claiming the earth is 35% iron. it's something you can quickly google and is acceptable through decades of study, but it also wouldn't be surprising if better tooling and measurements later on specify "it's actually 33.42% iron". Important for a geologist, splitting hairs for a casual audience.

We are very much a casual audience, and splitting hairs over a metaphor isn't that productive.

>>johnny+(OP)
what makes this worse is that the original metaphor was meant to try and communicate with business leaders.

There is no business leader on this earth that is going to agree with 0 debt is debt. Or that choosing not to do a thing or pay for a thing implies debt.

And it gets even worse when you take it to its logical conclusion. Choosing not to fix something is apparently debt. So then if you take out a loan to fix it it's also debt?

What the poster meant is it doesn't always harm anything to leave something unfinished or imperfect. Which is true, but then they tried to squeeze "technical debt" into that and went off the rails.

words have meanings for a reason.

>>PH95Vu+9m
okay, well I'm not a linguist. I wouldn't have chosen to make a dedicated word for a self-portrait picture in an official context over something practical like a singular gender-neutral pronoun. I wouldn't have chosen to make a word's extra definition be its own antonym because people can't help but engage in hyperbole. But society shapes language and its collective usage drives what words are "official".

Inaccurate or not, it's understood by people what "tech debt" means and the point of communication is to express ideas to others. Even if it spits on the queen's english, it furfills its goals. I lack the clout and energy to try and oppose and change such ideas (and to be frank, it wouldn't make the top 50 of things I would influence if given those factors).

>>johnny+Um
no one understands tech debt to mean "0 debt", you're making my point for me.

We have 1 poster abusing it and getting called out for it.

>>PH95Vu+P41
If we're talking about the abuse of language: "one person disagreeing" (in this case, the subject themself) is not the equivalent of "getting called out".

>>johnny+L91
You can't argue with my original point so instead you're trying to find something wrong with my wording.

I get to define my intent, not you. You cannot call someone out without disagreeing with the behavior or words that you're calling out. So congratulations on stating the obvious I suppose.

>>PH95Vu+8e5
We're well beyond a flame war, and the worst kind. This isn't Reddit. and to be frank I felt like we were constantly talking past each other despite my attempts to align ourselves. Once we have to resort to insults, especially over how words are used, it's clear we both missed the point.

My thoughts are laid out above. I have nothing more to add on the subject. You win, and I apologize for failing to understand your point.