My talk is not about paying off credit card bills or the "fiscal cliff", or monetary economics in general. However, economic principles guide everything. When the subject matter has nothing to do with us, we tend to see the principles that underly our observations more clearly, and we explain them with physics or biology, but when it comes to societal matters, we tend to think at an abstraction level that doesn't incorporate a deep understanding of which of these principles apply. We therefore, typically don't appreciate how they affect our daily lives. I'm speaking of principles such as supply and demand, entropy and friction. These principles are fundamental and cannot be avoided. There isn't a desire to experience one or the other. They are always there.
Some principles, however, aren't fundamental, but have an even greater affect on our lives. These principles are unique to human society and are often contrived. One of the foremost contrived concepts in economics is debt. Most people understand the concept of debt. The mathematics are fairly simple. You expend enough energy to reverse the effects of the debt before you can move forward, and it's that simple. With the application of interest, things change a bit. There is a reason bankers and realtors use HP 12 calculators (or now iPhones), because amortizing fixed and/or revolving debt isn't something our brain immediately gets. Because of this, it tends to be very easy to get into debt, especially on your first try - think 18 years old, just got your first credit card, etc...
So, what? Well, debt is cumbersome. Imaging lugging a 50LB weight with you, everywhere you go. You might be able to do this forever, but you're certainly not going to move as fast as you could without the weight. Too much debt is debilitating and eventually leads to bankruptcy (give up and start over - known in the software industry as a "rewrite"). Managing a moderate amount debt for too long can have similar or even worse effects.
Again, so what? Well, getting things done quickly in society sometimes means we benefit from things that get us into debt. After all, can you imagine saving up for 15 years and then buying your house? That's a pretty foreign concept for most Americans, but the idea of waiting until payday to buy a new iPad - that's no so foreign. That's because we feel the pain almost immediately when we get the credit card bill 30 days later and it has 50 extra dollars of interest. That's 50 dollars we'll never get back. When it comes to a 30 year mortgage, we might be OK with paying the bank double for the price of our house, because we don't have to deal with it next month. The basic idea here is that you have a choice: A) you can have the thing you want without having to put in the effort up front that's required to make it right, or B) taking the time to do it right, but giving up on the immediate gratification.
Ok, so I'll cut to the chase. The same principles apply to software development. Entropy comes into play when apps are coupled together, which leads to a loss in aggregate and specific knowledge of an app's functionality. Friction comes into play when you have to jump through 4 hoops to perform a small task. Supply and demand, I just fit into the top so that I could use the word economics, but trust me, it applies. The application of the costs incurred can be analogous to the application of interest in a loan. It is a cost that will continue to affect the debtor until the debt is paid. Once you accrue to enough debt, you're unable to satisfy the cost of the interest alone, and therefore unable to pay the bills. At this point, the only choices you have are A) throwing lots more talent at a problem (this equates to quantitative easing - printing money) and continuing to dredge on, B) adding a bit more talent, stopping all forward progress and working on the debt (this equates to increasing taxes and correcting fiscal policy), or C) rewriting from scratch (this equates to, of course, bankruptcy).
... not enough time to finish, shoot from the hip.