The hidden cost of Tech Debt

Tech debt isn’t just “ugly code.” It is financial debt. It is the interest you pay on every new feature you try to ship. If adding a simple button takes 3 days because the codebase is a mess, you are effectively paying a 300% tax on development.

Refactor vs. Rewrite

The temptation is always to “rewrite everything from scratch.” This is usually a mistake. Netscape died because they spent years rewriting their browser while IE took the market. At TENEX, we practice “Strangler Fig” refactoring. We carve out small pieces of the monolith and rewrite them as modern microservices or isolated modules, while the old system keeps running.

Documentation is the First Step

Usually, tech debt exists because nobody knows how the system works anymore. Before we change code, we map it out. We write documentation. Once we understand the flow, we can refactor safely. If you don’t understand it, you can’t fix it.