codedebt

noun

UK /ˈkəʊd dɛt/

US /ˈkoʊd dɛt/

Code debt is extra work you have to do later because of quick or messy choices made earlier.

The team spent the whole sprint paying off code debt instead of adding new features.

SYNONYMS

technical debt tech debt design debt development debt

RELATED WORDS

refactoring legacy code maintainability backlog codebase

OTHER MEANINGS

2. The accumulated cost of shortcuts taken in software design that make future changes harder.

Ignoring code debt for years made the system nearly impossible to upgrade.

3. A measure of how much cleanup work a codebase needs before it can grow safely.

Our code debt is high, so every new feature takes twice as long.

4. The trade-off between shipping fast now and fixing problems later.

Taking on code debt helped them launch on time, but the fixes came due the next quarter.