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Tackling Technical Debt: Strategies for Sustainable Software Development

Venkatesh Subramanian
5 min readApr 21, 2024

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Studies on developer productivity show developers are usually forced to create new technical debt as companies prioritize short-term gains, such as flashy features, over maintaining quality. However, it’s crucial to understand that Technical Debt impacts the organisation and developers’ happiness, job satisfaction, and morale.

Also, Uncle Bob’s post saying a mess is not a debt. He argues that messy code created by individuals unaware of good design practices should not be considered technical debt.

The metaphor of technical debt is that it's like a monetary debt. When we borrow money to purchase something, we must pay back more than we borrowed and repay with interest. Debt-ridden code has less technical agility, meaning debt-ridden products have less business agility.

Every debt necessitates repayment. Let's look at some strategies that help pay off the technical debts.

Code Quality

Bad code is an unintentional technical debt. Following coding standards, engaging in pair programming, and conducting peer reviews are essential. A strict code review process should eliminate bad code, thus preventing the creation of technical debt.

Code refactoring

Refactoring improves the quality of the code by simplifying it to meet ever-changing needs. It is the process of improving the internal structure of existing code without

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Venkatesh Subramanian
Venkatesh Subramanian

Written by Venkatesh Subramanian

Product development & Engineering Leader| Software Architect | AI/ML | Cloud computing|https://www.linkedin.com/in/venkatesh-subramanian-377451b4/

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