Right. Except that's just one of the many ways it's defined in the article. The article is a hot mess.
Even then, from a business perspective, reducing costs can be completely intentional and pragmatic. Meaning it can be profitable, so debt really is the wrong word. It's closer to sacrifice, or even frugality. You could go as far as to say it's technical efficiency, granted it does what is expected of it.
But if it breaks or starts causing problems, then you just have problems. At which point call it whatever you like.
Which is not how the term is being used in the article. But also "technically questionable decisions for the sake of reducing development time and costs" does not automatically become debt. Technically questionable decisions happen regardless so debt can be incurred without intending to save any money, and reducing development time and cost can be done without questionable decisions so without incurring any debt.
The article uses Docker as an example of "remodeling" which could very well be a technically questionable decision, because their argument for it is that it saves a lot of money (and is not a technical argument, which is why it could be technically questionable).
So in a sense, they're actively promoting technical debt because they're choosing their tools based on cost. They should rename their method from "remodeling" to "debt restructuring" or "refinancing". Of course, the middleman always gets paid.
It becomes technical debt. Just like financial debt costs you the interest rate times the amount owed, technical debt costs you time and resources spent on refactoring and cleaning up the code, rather than on activities that directly increase revenue, say, adding new features.
One thing that makes technical debt particularly problematic is that you can incur in it without knowing it. Unlike the case with financial debt, where it's impossible to “accidentally” borrow money. But, just because technical debt is hard to measure, it doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
> reducing development time and cost can be done without questionable decisions so without incurring any debt.
In principle, yes. In practice, the most common way to reduce development costs, at least in the short term, is to incur in technical debt.
> They should rename their method from "remodeling" to "debt restructuring" or "refinancing". Of course, the middleman always gets paid.
> One thing that makes technical debt particularly problematic is that you can incur in it without knowing it. Unlike the case with financial debt, where it's impossible to “accidentally” borrow money.
Debt doesn't occur only because of agreements to borrow, it can occur because you've incurred a liability by some other means. Which, yes, can occur accidentally.
Indeed, cutting development corners arguably risks incurring technical debt that will manifest concretely later in a process much more like cutting physical construction corners might risk negligence liability down the road and less like deliberate, planned debt financing vs. paying cash upfront for construction.
Even then, from a business perspective, reducing costs can be completely intentional and pragmatic. Meaning it can be profitable, so debt really is the wrong word. It's closer to sacrifice, or even frugality. You could go as far as to say it's technical efficiency, granted it does what is expected of it.
But if it breaks or starts causing problems, then you just have problems. At which point call it whatever you like.