Sunday, August 10, 2008

Code is not an asset

Michael Feathers wonders how to go beyond technical debt. I have been wondering about this for some time, and I think the answer is to account for code as a liability, not an asset.

The functionality that the code has, the value it delivers is an asset, but the code itself is a liability. This easily explains how refactoring and removing code add value, as long as functionality is preserved.