What is technical debt and how to work with it…

Technical debt refers to the accumulated compromises and suboptimal solutions in the code, taken to speed up development or due to incomplete understanding of requirements. It can manifest as poorly structured code, duplication, insufficient test coverage, outdated libraries, etc.

It can be managed in the following ways:

Awareness and documentation: It is important to recognize the existence of debt and its sources. It is useful to document problematic areas in the code or in a task tracking system.
Prioritization: Not all technical debt is equally critical. It is necessary to determine which parts have the most negative impact on development, stability, or performance, and focus on them.
Allocating time: Regularly allocate time in sprints or iterations for its elimination (for example, through refactoring). This can be a fixed percentage of the team's time.
Continuous integration and refactoring: Maintain high coding standards, write tests, and perform refactoring as part of daily work to avoid accumulating new debt.
Automation: Use static code analyzers, linters, and quality control tools to detect problems early.
Fixing as possible: Address small debts when making changes to the relevant code section.
Conducting "quality weeks" or "refactoring marathons": Intentionally allocate a period for large-scale elimination of technical debt.

An example of refactoring to reduce duplication:

# Before refactoring
def process_order(order_id):
    order_details = fetch_order_details(order_id)
    if order_details:
        price = calculate_price(order_details)
        if price > 100:
            apply_discount(order_details)
        save_order(order_details)
        send_confirmation_email(order_details)

def process_refund(refund_id):
    refund_details = fetch_refund_details(refund_id)
    if refund_details:
        calculate_refund_amount(refund_details)
        save_refund(refund_details)
        send_refund_confirmation_email(refund_details)

# After refactoring with shared parts
def save_data(data, data_type):
    if data_type == 'order':
        save_order(data)
        send_confirmation_email(data)
    elif data_type == 'refund':
        save_refund(data)
        send_refund_confirmation_email(data)

def process_order_refined(order_id):
    order_details = fetch_order_details(order_id)
    if order_details:
        price = calculate_price(order_details)
        if price > 100:
            apply_discount(order_details)
        save_data(order_details, 'order')

def process_refund_refined(refund_id):
    refund_details = fetch_refund_details(refund_id)
    if refund_details:
        calculate_refund_amount(refund_details)
        save_data(refund_details, 'refund')

What is technical debt and how to work with it?