---
title: "Technical debt is just an excuse"
url: https://daily.dev/posts/technical-debt-is-just-an-excuse-1rpqnwawx
source_url: https://www.infoworld.com/article/3978952/technical-debt-is-just-an-excuse.html
type: article
source: "InfoWorld"
published: 2025-05-07T09:06:13.367Z
updated: 2025-05-07T09:23:06.321Z
tags: ["agile", "technical-debt"]
reading_time: 4
upvotes: 45
comments: 9
language: en
---

> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Technical debt is just an excuse

**[InfoWorld](https://daily.dev/sources/infoworld)** · 4 min read · 45 upvotes · 9 comments

## Summary

Technical debt is often misused as an excuse for poor coding practices. Originally, it represented deliberate decisions to write sub-par code temporarily, with a plan to address it later. However, it has become a label for all bad code, which can stem from accidental complexity or rushed development. To reclaim its true meaning, only code with a planned fix should be labeled as technical debt. Anything else should be recognized as code rot.

## Full article

daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: <https://www.infoworld.com/article/3978952/technical-debt-is-just-an-excuse.html>

## Community discussion

Top comments from developers on daily.dev.

**@mkurzeja** · 7 upvotes

> It does not always make sense to have this split. If you have some code, that is "bad", and needs to be fixed - does it matter if it was done on purpose, or just because of the lack of skill of the dev who wrote it? I don't think it does.
>
> Another problem I have with the split is, that quite often, after a year or two after the "bad" code was written, it will be picked up by someone else, and you might not have the knowledge why it was done this way. Of course, there are some obvious cases were you see that code was just copy-pasted from stack overflow, but in many cases you could wrongly...

**@denisb0** · 7 upvotes

> Oh we invented new term for technical debt, so we can blame lazy coders about it

**@asmundur** · 6 upvotes

> Debating the meaning of “technical debt” distracts from the real issue: a lack of code ownership and oversight. It’s easier to argue semantics than to confront organizational negligence.

**@williamadil** · 5 upvotes

> I like ice cream

**@mythobyte** · 3 upvotes

> If you ever hear someone say "this is a quick fix and I will get back to it later", 99% of the time, they never get back to it.

## Similar posts on daily.dev

- [Don’t just attend KubeCon \+ CloudNativeCon, Merge Forward your experience\!](https://daily.dev/posts/don-t-just-attend-kubecon-cloudnativecon-merge-forward-your-experience--l0rpp73x8) · CNCF · 0 upvotes · 0 comments
- [Announcing H2 2026 KCDs](https://daily.dev/posts/announcing-h2-2026-kcds-m96goajm1) · CNCF · 1 upvotes · 0 comments
- [Two months of Open Community Groups](https://daily.dev/posts/two-months-of-open-community-groups-asf52zhbs) · CNCF · 0 upvotes · 0 comments
- [CNCF Unveils Schedule for KubeCon \+ CloudNativeCon Europe 2026](https://daily.dev/posts/cncf-unveils-schedule-for-kubecon-cloudnativecon-europe-2026-ikhcoa5cb) · CNCF · 2 upvotes · 0 comments
- [CNCF Debuts KubeCon \+ CloudNativeCon Japan 2026 Schedule](https://daily.dev/posts/cncf-debuts-kubecon-cloudnativecon-japan-2026-schedule-xp5pyudub) · CNCF · 1 upvotes · 0 comments

---

Tags: [#agile](https://daily.dev/tags/agile), [#technical-debt](https://daily.dev/tags/technical-debt)

[View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/technical-debt-is-just-an-excuse-1rpqnwawx)