[dec0dedab0de]

The problem is that there is never an objective right way. There are infinite wrong ways, and usually a handful of ways that are just fine with different pros and cons that are not always clear up front.

A lot of the time when people say technical debt they mean a developer not taking the time to understand some code they inherited (or they wrote and forgot about), and wanting to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

If think you ask ten developers the best way to refactor a complex program you'll get 100 answers.

But I do agree that deliberate technical debt is more common on a decent team. I definitely have left many comments like "I know it would be better if I did XYZ, or ABC, but the boss wants it now, and I'm tired, so it's going to be a monstrosity"

[yarekt]

the 10 -> 100 bit is absolutely right. a cross functional team has to learn how to work together well, and spend a non trivial amount of time discussing the problem and tempering solutions until something is achieved where each of them are some state of “happy”. This is I think the crux of many tech debt issues in companies