[philbo]

I have an extremist take on this:

All source code is technical debt. If you increase the amount of code, you increase the amount of debt. It's impossible to reduce debt with more code. The only way to reduce debt is by reducing code.

(and note that I'm not measuring code in bytes here; switching to single-character variable names would not reduce debt. I'm measuring it in statements, expressions, instructions; reducing those without reducing functionality decreases debt)

[alternatex]

I'll try a counterargument. If more code is more technical debt then writing more succinct code is less technical debt. But succinct code is often harder to grok and maintain than code written for the average Joe dev. So less code can sometimes mean less maintainability and thus more technical debt.

I think you instead meant to say more business logic implemented in code is more technical debt, not necessarily just more code.

[philbo]

No, I really mean more code. It's an unpopular opinion I know, but I think debt scales linearly with code, mainly because I also think bugs scale linearly with code. I recognise that readability and maintainability are important, but it doesn't change the basic equivalence of code = debt for me.