plaintext tech debt

[packbat]

We're thinking about making a new personal website for ourselves, and thinking about the way we avoid buying physical things most of the time, and suddenly we remembered a concept that computer software developers talk about: tech debt.

Like, the thing is, if you write code, then now you have to maintain it. If something changes in the computers that use the code, the code can break and you have to deal with that. If something changes in the problems the code must address, then the code may no longer fit and you have to deal with that. Writing code is work, but now that it exists it continuously produces more work, and that work doesn't happen on a schedule of you just feeling like writing code one day - it happens whether you like it or not. The upkeep costs come due no matter what.

And we're thinking about making a new personal website, and what to put on it ... and it's the same problem. Unlike a blog (where posts happen and then settle into the archive) or a microblog (where posts happen and then get buried in the churn of the past), anything we put on a website we have to upkeep. What ingredients we use in a recipe changes. We write new PICO-8 chiptunes. A webcomic's site hosting dies. These are changes and, to us, if we make a website, it's supposed to be correct, not just a historical artifact.

So ... yeah. We're thinking about making a new personal website. But it probably won't have a lot on it.