[W]hen solving larger issues we have a higher tolerance for technical debt… That said, we probably shouldn’t throw caution to the wind and take on unlimited debt because we’re still paying back our last emergency loan.
I know Aaron [Patterson] said that features are too big to fail. There’s nobody actually going to bail us out, though.
Later:
Your tolerance for debt is “features now + features later” over “cost now + maintenance.” Josh [Peek] said the future is the most important, because it’s the thing we’re living with for the rest of our life.
Yehuda Katz, “Rails: The Next Five Years,” RailsConf 2012.