Interview with Dave Thomas and Andy Hunt, the Pragmatic Programmers. Interesting for the idea of "technical debt":
As soon as something is broken--whether it is a bug in the code, a problem with your process, a bad requirement, bad documentation--something you know is just wrong, you really have to stop and address it right then and there. Just fix it. And if you just can't fix it, put up police tape around it. Nail plywood over it. Make sure everybody knows it is broken, that they shouldn't trust it, shouldn't go near it. It is as important to show you are on top of the situation as it is to actually fix the problem. As soon as something is broken and not fixed, it starts spreading a malaise across the team. "Well, that's broken. Oh I just broke that. Oh well."
They discuss this in their book (which all programmers should read) as well, but I like the technical debt label.
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