Thread by @markimbriaco

Complaining about technical debt is not just pointless, it's actively harmful. Stop it.

I get it. It's natural to be frustrated by all the cruft that is left behind when organizations grow and change, and there's often precious little effort spent to improve old codebases.

Here's the thing, though: Complaining makes it worse.

It's very easy to create a self-reinforcing negative feedback loop in a team when you complain about a previous technical decision. It's something everyone can relate to and rally around as being bad. We can all lament how we wish we had more time to clean up old things.

Iterative improvement becomes even harder in this environment, because the changes are deliberately small. The cycle of negativity manifests as a fatalistic shrug.

"That's great, but look how awful all these other things still are ..."

Especially resist the urge to talk in generalizations, particularly when talking aout problems. Generalizations are not actionable and are only going to hurt morale.

When I think about improvement, I focus on three things:

10 Define what good looks like.
20 Stop the bleeding.
30 Iterate directionally toward good.
40 GOTO 10

That's it.

Just to get out in front of the people who are going to countsplain me, I know that there are four things in the previous list. I decided the GOTO for effect at the end doesn't count. If it bugs you, pretend it's a while (true) loop instead.