The problem with the concept of technical debt is the implicit suggestion that you know what is debt and what is not up front. An awful lot of debt is stuff tha

The problem with the concept of technical debt is the implicit suggestion that you know what is debt and what is not up front. An awful lot of debt is stuff that people thought was needed but turned out to be totally off base and now weighs everything down. And large piece of that - not by any means all or even most, but a large piece - is people pre-emptively optimising the design to satisfy precepts put about by people like Fowler himself.