I disagree that technical debt should be viewed through the lens of code smells - those are specific, narrow concerns and if they are not burdensome then they d

I disagree that technical debt should be viewed through the lens of code smells - those are specific, narrow concerns and if they are not burdensome then they do not constitute debt. There exists debt-ridden code with zero code smells (because its domain model is flat out wrong) and smelly code without debt (because it’s simply not of tangible impact). Technical debt is, to me, usually half-finished work. Instead of completing the job, we accepted an 80% solution that is designed in such a way that makes the 100% solution impossible without a complete rewrite. Eventually new features always break something or take a year each. It is this drag on speed that is the interest on the debt - we pay it with our time, endlessly.