The longer you live in a place the more crap you will accumulate in your home. Windows need to be cleaned. Walls need to be painted. There’s this one tap, that’s fixed with some wire and tape.
There’s a second-order thing going on though with tech debt that makes it different than just maintenance: Tech debt is when you address a problem in a way that makes future problems more difficult to address. So if the wire-and-tape fix is actually robust, easy to work around, and/or easy to reverse, then it wouldn’t be tech debt. But if it made it harder to unclog/clean the tap, or to fix the next leak, or install/remove things around it, then it would be like tech debt.
The longer you live in a place the more crap you will accumulate in your home. Windows need to be cleaned. Walls need to be painted. There’s this one tap, that’s fixed with some wire and tape.
Tech debt is like that just for software.
There’s a second-order thing going on though with tech debt that makes it different than just maintenance: Tech debt is when you address a problem in a way that makes future problems more difficult to address. So if the wire-and-tape fix is actually robust, easy to work around, and/or easy to reverse, then it wouldn’t be tech debt. But if it made it harder to unclog/clean the tap, or to fix the next leak, or install/remove things around it, then it would be like tech debt.
Yes, the software might depend on outdated technology like oil burner heating and you want to transition to solar with a heat pump.