I have submitted my proposal to the Agile Manifesto Committee that Feb. 29th should forever be knows as #NationalTechDebtDay.
For this day is the most abusive “refactor”. It happened at the beginning of time at Calendar Inc.
The demo was planned, the invites accepted, and the sun dials were ready to be introduced into the World.
But the lonely QA analyst knew something was wrong. The numbers were literally not adding up.
It does not take 365 Days for Earth to circle the Sun. It takes 365.24 Days.
The team was convened. The problem was obvious, but the solution was not.
The product owner spoke. “hmmm .24 is almost .25 -> let’s just add an extra day almost every four years”.
The product owner needed something quick.
The engineers needed to appease the product owner.
So Tech Debt was introduced.
Maybe they there could have been a different amount of months? Maybe a different number of Days each Month? Maybe the concepts of a Day, an Hour, a Minute… could have changed? Maybe they could have solved the problem in a better way?
Nahhhhh - too “late” to ask these questions.
Now as users, we are bound by this calendar, bound by this calculation of time. Bound to this Absurdity.
So, we should use this Absurd Day to look at the Absurdities we have introduced into our code bases, our lives.
We only get one look almost every four years. A reminder that in the moment, we should take our “time” to make sure we are handling new revelations in the best way possible.
