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The cost of introducing and paying off tech debt has changed very, very much and I don't even know most of us have the time and space to think about what it means Tech debt has been so central to the software craft for decades, and now... how much does it matter?

I think it still matters a lot and a bunch of people are going to discover this soon.

Yes, I think this will be a question with a clear answer in 12-18 months.

because people will suddenly start reading the code again in 12-18 months? seems unlikely those who are still reading the code already know, and the rest don't care 🤷‍♂️

You can incur tech debt while reading the code, the two things are unrelated. All this means is you can experiment faster and take on tech debt in service of some goal because it’s easier (read: cheaper) to fix in the future.

no one said you can't incur tech debt while reading the code claiming the two are "unrelated" is (excuse be but) preposterous

Sure they are. Incurring tech debt happens whether or not you read the code, when it’s done consciously, the decision is made outside of reading the code entirely. Even detecting most classes of it doesn’t require reading the code, observability, complexity checking, etc. have existed for years

debt happens whether or not you read the code, I never claimed it doesn't I claim it happens *less* when you read the code, more when you don't again, if you haven't read the code, you don't know what you don't know, which means you can't even ask debt happens either way - but at different rates

And I don't think that's the case. Tech debt is (IME) typically incurred consciously, the cruft-buildup form of tech debt is a process issue and doesn't require reading code to avoid or mitigate. Tech debt (and non-TD issues like inappropriate or disjoint architecture choices) are well-known