TECHNICAL DEBT: A lot of new code is written very very fast, because that’s what the intersection of the current wave of software development (and the angel investor / venture capital model of funding) in Silicon Valley compels people to do. Funders want companies to scale up, quickly, and become monopolies in their space, if they can, through network effects — a system in which the more people use a platform, the more valuable it is. Software engineers do what they can, as fast as they can. Essentially, there is a lot of equivalent of “duct-tape” in the code, holding things together. If done right, that code will eventually be fixed, commented (explanations written up so the next programmer knows what the heck is up) and ported to systems built for the right scale — before there is a crisis. How often does that get done? I wager that many wait to see if the system comes crashing down, necessitating the fix. By then, you are probably too big to go down for too long, so there’s the temptation for more duct tape. And so on.

Instead of thinking of technical debt as yesterday’s work that I failed to do, I think of it as tomorrow’s feature I can have today

Vim speed is not really the point

the cost of carry

of Columbia

"agency,"

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of the District of Columbia