> A mess is definitely a technical debt. Maybe. > It's going to take time and money to clean it up. You can put it off more, but it's going to make everything

> A mess is definitely a technical debt. Maybe. > It's going to take time and money to clean it up. You can put it off more, but it's going to make everything cost more money and take more time than it should. Or you can clean it up now and save that time and money. Nope. Lots of code is abandoned for external reasons. All effort spent on it was wasted, including "clean it up now". A mortage or a credit card balance is debt - you must deal with it. Crappy code is different - it is often abandoned without any consequence.