Lots of things get labeled as “technical debt.” In any non-trivial project the software will have a backlog, bugs, unimplemented features, half-baked and kludgy

Lots of things get labeled as “technical debt.” In any non-trivial project the software will have a backlog, bugs, unimplemented features, half-baked and kludgy solutions, things we would do differently given the chance. All of that is to be expected, like clutter in a junk drawer or things we hope to eventually get to in our lives. Time and programming resources are finite in every project, and no one knows how to write perfect code. Requirements are never complete and unambiguous. We can’t know the future. Calling a completely normal side-effect of professional software development “technical debt” as if it’s an aberration assumes we know how to do everything right, and have time to do that. We never do.