Building a new software project often starts with a sprint of pure features. We’ve successfully built a functional client for the Spacetraders.io game, but as the functionality grows, we’ve incurred a hidden cost – technical debt. We must pay down this debt as part of regular maintenance, to keep our Spacetraders client—or any PHP project—healthy. Let’s look at three practices for doing so – keeping dependencies current, reducing code complexity, and maintaining a well-organized codebase. by Oscar Merida