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    So according to you, deliberately creating bugs is acceptable as long as they occur rare enough? Commented Oct 8, 2013 at 6:39
  • 91
    @scai - you pick your battles. I've been in the industry for 15 years and I have not seen a single release in 3 companies that I worked at to date, that shipped with 0 bugs. It just doesn't happen in the real world. I'm not saying you intentionally introduce broken code but there's a level of perfection and bullet proofing which simply doesn't pay off Commented Oct 8, 2013 at 6:50
  • 29
    Creating a bug "deliberately" would mean the bug itself was intentional - which is not the same thing as being aware of the possibility or even specific existence of a bug or incompatibility. I have an HTML5 app that doesn't work right in IE6, I'm aware of it, I even suspected that would be the case when I made it - it's just that "those that matter don't mind, and those who mind don't matter". You can knowingly build a bridge that won't withstand a nuclear attack, and that's OK. Commented Oct 8, 2013 at 16:22
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    +100 for your take on technical debt. Like the OP, I've been trying to eliminate all technical debt. I had never considered the idea that technical debt is fine, until the interest starts killing you. Now I see that managing the debt is much more important than eliminating it. I had never thought of it in those terms before. (btw I also use the pomodoro technique.) Commented Oct 8, 2013 at 17:33
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    This answer closely mirrors my own experience and take on Technical Debt. More than intentionally creating it, simply by entrusting the work to junior staff, you end up with technical debt naturally, which must be fixed later, educating them in the process. Basically once you reach this stage, you MUST invest in learning about tradeoffs, and think in terms of borrowing debt which must later be repaid. This because you MUST entrust work to junior staff simply because there's only one of you, and even if what you get is lower quality, you can deliver what would be impossible for you alone. Commented Oct 9, 2013 at 0:46