[Nomentatus]

I'm with you, I agree we gotta drop the "D" word. There's no bank to go to to extend the loan. The "interest" isn't necessarily low or negotiable or even predictable. Way too misleading.

But I'm wondering if we shouldn't be saying "preventative maintenance" and sometimes just "repair" (for example if there's already an error rate, as in the article's last example.)

Of course, then ya gotta answer the question "to prevent what?" To which the answer is "SNAFUs" or "gremlins" (pardon the WWII terms) such as ones that will make all coding work more expensive later on or will horrify customers by their effects. Or just kill the business outright. I've seen that happen, after having been firmly refused permission to do preventive maintainance on my code. (I'm a worse coder but a better salesman now, so that probably wouldn't happen, now.)

Does this stretch the word repair? No, I think if you're replacing disc brake pads on an old car after X amount of miles, that's repair even if you can still stop the car.

In other words, maybe this has been solved in other ordinary economic contexts, and we should just be brave enough to use them thar words.