[bendotc]

What he's calling "a mess" certainly is debt.

In money, debt is debt, whether you acquired it by taking out a responsible mortgage or running up your credit card on bottles of Dom Perignon to impress your friends. In software, technical debt is technical debt whether it was wise or not. The point is, you're paying for it when you try to do other work on the project (interest) and it's gonna take time to fix (principle).

Saying "A mess is not technical debt" is silly. The metaphor is useful whether it was a good idea to get into debt or not.

Edit: s/Don/Dom/ -- thanks for the pointer!

[nasmorn]

Totally tangentially to the post I just confirmed that it is called Dom Perignon and in doing so I learned that they have a massive technical debt with their website. Or maybe the requirements were in the line of, build us the slowest flash website imaginable and can you create a loading graphic that looks like a rendering issue?