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Chernobyl: The True Cost Of Technical Debt
A comparison of technical debt in the Chernobyl disaster and software development
HBO’s Chernobyl drew me in instantly. Not just because of the drama or history around the famed incident, it was the way actor Jared Harris (Valery Legasov) approached mitigating the nuclear explosion that was mesmerizing to me. Watching his character mentally engineer a solution with the least risks based on the current assumptions only to run into unforeseeable issues later resonated with my engineering side.
*SPOILER ALERT*
Technical Debt
More than anything else, Chernobyl is a stark reminder of the true cost of technical debt.
Technical debt, for those who don’t work in the software world, is the concept that bad design decisions made in code or poorly written code will need to be fixed or will cause future problems. Unlike in the Chernobyl disaster, technical debt is usually invisible in software but can cost companies millions to fix. What drives technical debt is very similar to what was portrayed in the final episode of the mini-series: A combination of bad design decisions due to cost cutting (graphite tips), human error and productivity/business needs.
