[ryukafalz]

> I've always assumed engineers (myself included) write code to the best of their abilities to solve a given problem at the time.

In your own personal project, I'd probably agree. But in my experience in a work project there can often be imposed deadlines or project changes that result in engineers writing code that they themselves know is suboptimal even at the time.

In other words, the sort of change that might include a comment like "I know this isn't the best way to do this but don't have time to do it the best way right now." It's not the best I can do overall, but it's the only thing I'm able to do for whatever reason. That's the kind of thing I'd call tech debt.