> ...but when you have a lot of debt, lenders are cautious about lending you money That doesn't strike me as the main point of the metaphor. The more debt you

> ...but when you have a lot of debt, lenders are cautious about lending you money That doesn't strike me as the main point of the metaphor. The more debt you have, the more borrowing becomes expensive because you have to pay interest on the total amount; it grows exponentially (in the literal meaning) if you don't repay it. As many find out the hard way, it gets to a point where adding new features or fixing bugs takes insane amounts of time because you can't make changes without breaking everything.