"Comprehension debt is like technical debt, but fundamentally different. Technical debt is about choices developers consciously make to defer work until a later stage of the business. You know you're taking a shortcut. You know you'll have to come back and fix it. That's traditional technical debt. Comprehension debt is different. It's when we don't comprehend what the system does anymore."
"He calls it "theory building." The idea is that code implodes when the team that has the theory-the mental model-of that particular piece of code is dissolved. The code will keep running and producing results, sure. But the moment you try to modify it, you're in trouble. You don't have the theory to actually work with it. Naur says you have to rebuild not just the program, but also its underlying theory by a new team."
Comprehension debt occurs when a team lacks a mental model of a system and therefore cannot understand or modify the code, even if the code runs correctly. Unlike traditional technical debt, comprehension debt arises from absent understanding rather than deliberate shortcuts. AI-generated code accelerates feature shipping and broad refactors, increasing the risk of accumulating code that no one comprehends. The absence of theory makes modification risky and costly because new teams must rebuild both the program and its underlying theory before safely changing behavior. Recognizing and addressing comprehension debt requires preserving or transferring mental models alongside code.
Read at The Bootstrapped Founder
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