How deeply does "Looks Good to Me" cover technical debt?

Identifies difficult review scenarios and prevention practices, but stops short of defining remediation plans or measuring debt.

Technical debt

As explained in "Looks Good to Me"

The future maintenance and remediation cost created by accepting an expedient or suboptimal software decision.

Technical debt is the future cost of accepting code that is expedient, difficult to review, architecturally wrong, incomplete, misunderstood, or subtly buggy. During review, teams weigh whether rework justifies delay or whether to accept the work and its consequences. section 4.4.4

Treat these as tough issues that deserve early discussion:

Oversized pull requests that combine unrelated changes or cannot be organized into smaller logical changes. section 4.4.4
Architectural problems or unagreed introductions of patterns, libraries, or tools. section 4.4.4
Missing requirements, misunderstood requirements, and subtle bugs that evade static analysis or automated tests. section 4.4.4

Preventing avoidable debt

Discuss new features thoroughly, define clear acceptance criteria, and make it safe for anyone to ask questions during development. These steps move difficult decisions earlier, before review makes rework more expensive. section 4.4.4

How "Looks Good to Me" covers it

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Also explained in

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Lead Developer Career GuideThe future cost of maintaining or changing software resulting from expedient choices or unresolved technical issues.
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Architecture Modernization: Socio-technical alignment of software, strategy, and structureTechnical debt is the future cost and constraint created by choosing expedient implementation or maintenance decisions over more durable solutions.
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Think Like a Software Engineering ManagerTechnical debt is the accumulated future cost of expedient technical decisions that make software harder to change or maintain.
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Delivering Machine Learning Projects: From design to deploymentTechnical debt is the future cost created by expedient technical decisions that increase maintenance, correction, or evolution effort.
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Graph Neural Networks in ActionTechnical debt is the future cost of design or implementation decisions that require later rework, workarounds, or replacement.
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Think Like a CTOTechnical debt is the accumulated cost of choosing short-term technical solutions that make future software maintenance or change more difficult.
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Collaborative Software Design: How to facilitate domain modeling decisionsThe future cost of deliberately choosing a less-than-ideal software design or implementation in order to deliver value sooner.
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The Art of CodeTechnical debt is the future cost of maintenance and change created by expedient technical choices or unresolved implementation deficiencies.
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PostgreSQL Mistakes and How to Avoid ThemTechnical debt is the accumulated cost of delaying or choosing expedient implementations that make future changes or maintenance more difficult.

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Related concepts

refactoringaddressed by · Refactoring is the restructuring of existing software or code to change its internal organization and improve its design, typically while preserving externally observable behavior.
pair programmingaddressed by · Pair programming is a software development practice in which two people collaborate on the same programming task, sharing implementation, review, or guidance responsibilities.
code duplicationproduced by · Code duplication is the presence of equivalent or substantially similar source code or implementation logic in multiple locations within a software system.
technical leadaddressed by · A technical lead is a software engineer who provides technical ownership, direction, coordination, and guidance for a team or project.

This explainer was generated by Manning's knowledge graph from the text of "Looks Good to Me". The section links point to the parts of the book it draws on.