[Oras]

It’s not like code base written by developers before AI were manageable. The term tech debt was there way before AI coding, and was mainly due to changes made by developers.

I see the point of your argument when this is done by inexperienced developers, as they wouldn’t know what’s happening but for those who knows and guide what has to be done, I don’t see much difference. It’s about understanding the outcome, and evaluating the risk.

[throwatdem12311]

Technical Debt is not a developer skill issue. It’s a management planning, capacity and budget issue. It’s a bet that the cost of servicing the debt will be less than the cost of paying for it outright with cash. I’ve been in the industry for decades and 95% of the dysfunction in an engineering organization is always management.

AI doesn’t really fix that or is really even that suited for it. In many cases it makes it worse.

That’s why you see software quality going down. Developers aren’t told to make better quality software even though AI does really make that easier. Instead they’re told to make more software faster for cheaper.

Cheap, Fast, Quality. Pick two. Business will pick cheap (short term) and fast every single time.

[acdha]

It’s a question of degree: technical debt has a carrying cost trying to balance features against your ability to support the codebase. LLMs change both sides of that equation but I think most companies are going to struggle with maintaining a balance when it’s so easy to push past concerns and get something which seems to work.

[bayindirh]

Tech debt is a debt taken to reduce development time. It's a time debt actually. Patching something that would work until the team has the time to do it correctly.

...and that time never comes in most cases. Because monies are earned in exchanged for that debt and, management cares about monies. They don't see that debt as important, or as debt at all.