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0 pointsowens997y ago0 comments

This.

As I always say, "If you are building a startup, over-engineering is a far bigger sin than creating technical debt."

0 comments

But having CI, proper logging, and code review isn’t over engineering. The time, effort and bugs saved by spending 1-2 days putting these policies and procedures in place is valuable early on.

Of course, each of those pieces is at risk of becoming over engineered. But hopefully the team has a leader that knows when to move forward and when to pull back.

mcv7y ago

Particularly CI. If you want to be able to release fast and often, having that automated is going to save you a lot of time.

And CI doesn't immediately have to include everything you'll eventually want; just having automated build and deploy will make your life a lot easier. Add some automated testing as soon as you can afford to (which hopefully is right away, because it's not that hard to set up), and you're ready to move.

pandler7y ago

Unfortunately I’ve met some people that take that mentality to a macho extreme in the form of “if you want to be STARTUP, you should actively avoid doing anything that resembles forethought.”

kybernetikos7y ago

And in many places they go hand in hand - some pieces of code will be massively over-engineered and genericised for a future that will never come, while other, important (but possibly less interesting) pieces will be peppered with // TODO and // THINK ABOUT THIS LATER.

andbberger7y ago

That's just a cop out! Such a tired meme!

angersock7y ago

It's true though. What's your counterargument?

Tired memes can be tired because they're true.

hobofan7y ago

If you want your startup to run for more than a year (= roughly the time the effects of technical debt start to kick in significantly in my experience), you need to find a good way how to handle technical debt, and keep it in check.

I have seen my share of startups where a platform plagued with technical debt was the main limitation for growth, which is a very avoidable situation.

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t0mbstone7y ago

Setting up CI is basically as simple as adding a small .yml config file to your git repo (if you are using a service like Travis or Circle CI) and clicking a couple of buttons to give the tool access to your github repo.

rjvs7y ago

If you are writing a web app maybe, if you’re writing a VR app, it’s definitely not that easy.

retiredcoder7y ago

True to that. Software engineering isn’t just web apps.

flukus7y ago

Isn't over-engineering a type of technical debt? At the very least both can exist simultaneously.

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