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Entropy — Why Code Rots And Technical Debt Grows

Ben "The Hosk" Hosking
ITNEXT
Published in
6 min readJul 5, 2024

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Software is like entropy: It is difficult to grasp, weighs nothing, and obeys the Second Law of Thermodynamics; i.e., it always increases. Norman Augustine

Entropy is a way to measure disorder, uncertainty, and confusion. Entropy is the reason sand castles eventually dissolve back into the beach.

  • It's why Ice cubes melt to become water
  • Why we get older, not younger
  • Why code and fruit rots
  • Why a child's room become messy and never magically tidy

Developers need to put effort to control entropy, otherwise documentation is outdated, code rots and technical debt builds up.

Entropy explains why a code base turns into legacy code. Each fix, bug, extra line of code adds to the technical debt and slowly stretches the initial design.

If you don’t control entropy with a good development process then you get chaos. Chaos in software development leads to complexity, which leads to more chaos.

Entropy

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Published in ITNEXT

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Written by Ben "The Hosk" Hosking

Technology philosopher | Software dev → Solution architect | Avid reader | Life long learner

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