What if technical debt happens on purpose ? Clever programmers incur technical debt, then leave company. Debt incurred becomes another bullet point on their resume, and they eventually become Senior Developers. Their debt is paid by someone else. Maintaining an app affected by technical debt is a thankless job and you don't get much bragging rights afterwards. But the programmer who incurred debt can look good in the eyes of management, after all he worked SO FAST and you're the bitter, toxic person who complains.
> I'm not convinced maintainers are perceived as valuable.
I'm pretty sure an accountant classifies technical debt control as not being valuable.
"A cost center is a department or function within an organization that does not directly add to profit but still costs the organization money to operate."
Want to stay compliant with privacy laws / norms / standards / file formats in your useful custom software? Gotta pay some technical debt dealing with that new complexity; just so that you can continue to operate at the same provided value.
Necessary, but not valuable.
rant
And then you go and try to get a raise.
/rant
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My cynical side tells me that it is a sound personal strategy to declare that old languages like Java are outdated, and that the only way forward is with the newer shinier languages.
In my experience, accountants want to capitalize software development costs (makes the bottom line look better) but must expense maintenance (i.e., bug-fixing). So that translates to a (slight?) preference for quality software that has fewer bugs.
