The ability to make those decisions, often mid-project, is what separates veterans from rookies.
I know two kinds of veterans: the ones that grew up eating their own food, a.k.a. maintaining their code over the years and following customers complaints and unexpected specifications evolution, and the ones who were soon magnified as writing software "that works" and immediately moved to "enlighten" other projects, leaving the stinking pile to the "rookies".
... and you can reconcile the debt over time
Honestly, has this ever happened to you? Technical debt too often ends up being an always growing burden on the shoulders on the next developers who have to touch the stinking pile with the business around asking: "Why is it taking so long to code such a small modification? In the end, the applications already WORKS!".
I agree that code has to respect time and money budget, but the budget must respect the code, too! The biggest problem in our industry is that too many of us have made non technical people believe that "with software, everything is possible", just to have a project failing after another when the fairy tales world crashes with reality.
As Alex put it: "We are practically the only industry where completion and success are synonymous. If the foundation of a one-year-old home is crumbling and its roof is plagued with leaks, would anybody actually call that a success? Of course not! So why are the products we create – complex information systems that should last at least fifteen years – be held to a different standard?"
http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/What_Could_Possibly_Be_Worse...
I know two kinds of veterans: the ones that grew up eating their own food, a.k.a. maintaining their code over the years and following customers complaints and unexpected specifications evolution, and the ones who were soon magnified as writing software "that works" and immediately moved to "enlighten" other projects, leaving the stinking pile to the "rookies".
... and you can reconcile the debt over time
Honestly, has this ever happened to you? Technical debt too often ends up being an always growing burden on the shoulders on the next developers who have to touch the stinking pile with the business around asking: "Why is it taking so long to code such a small modification? In the end, the applications already WORKS!".
I agree that code has to respect time and money budget, but the budget must respect the code, too! The biggest problem in our industry is that too many of us have made non technical people believe that "with software, everything is possible", just to have a project failing after another when the fairy tales world crashes with reality.
As Alex put it: "We are practically the only industry where completion and success are synonymous. If the foundation of a one-year-old home is crumbling and its roof is plagued with leaks, would anybody actually call that a success? Of course not! So why are the products we create – complex information systems that should last at least fifteen years – be held to a different standard?" http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/What_Could_Possibly_Be_Worse...