The cost of updating dependencies, or not
Cliff Brake October 02, 2024 #dependencies #technical debtAs developers, we are often lazy when it comes to updating dependencies.
A short-term productivity hack is to not update them.
Leave our Yocto build at an old version.
Never touch go.mod
or package.json
-- everything is working and I can keep
focusing on coding features.
Don't update our tools -- we don't have time.
... until things break, there is a security problem in a dependency, or we need a feature in a new version of something, etc.
And then things grind to a halt.
As Khem recently shared, Maintenance is costlier than development, so even though development is important today, maintenance is more important -- for tomorrow.
Part of YOUR Platform should be selecting technologies that can be updated regularly with little pain, and a process to do this.
It is the question of paying a little bit continuously, or a lot all at once later, and the latter is often so painful that in many cases it is impractical.
Investing in YOUR Platforming compounds positive gains -- neglecting technical debt compounds negative gains.