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by EugeneOZ 1592 days ago
We were talking about another topic. “Temporary dirty MVPs” are only acceptable if their code will be completely thrown away. Otherwise, “there is nothing more permanent than temporary patches” (c) forgot who.
1 comments

Yeah, certainly the tech debt code should be thrown away. I think this is hard to discuss without a concrete example in mind, though. Or rather without both having the same concrete example in mind.

I get the sense that everyone here is imagining their own - very different - concrete example of tech debt, and talking entirely at cross purposes as a result.

If the foundation, base of the project is quickly created just for MVP - it should be rewritten. If just some of the small parts were created without care - then throwing them away is not a problem.
I really need to emphasise, 'tech debt' does not imply 'without care'. Just to link to the last comment where I emphasised this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30286955

This is why I say it's fruitless to discuss this without making clear what concrete examples we're imagining when we say 'tech debt'. I'm almost certain that you and I are not thinking of remotely the same thing. 'Tech debt' is very different from plain old shitty code.