I love the metaphor of technical debt: consciously opting to take the easy way out in the short term, explicitly accepting a more painful route down the road, because having a quick solution in the short term will give you the wiggle room to absorb the pain in the longer term.
Like taking out a loan so you can start a business, which allows you to pay it back with interest.
I also like the metaphor of technical debt for what it does not say. It is unwise to take on debt without a plan of when and how to pay it back, especially if it doesn't buy you anything in the meantime.
Likewise, technical debt is not a licence to take a shortcut to make an arbitrary deadline, thereby risking being held back when faced with an actual deadline.
@vinnl I agree, and it's also interesting how different people perceive technical debt differently. Some just don't care, and others never want to compromise. I like this piece Martin Fowler wrote on the topic :). https://martinfowler.com/articles/is-quality-worth-cost.html
Something else that's interesting is that it isn't always clear when you're doing a disservice by trying to fight "technical debt". You may be thinking that your solution is great but you are actually overengineering and shooting yourself in the foot.
@noeldemartin Great article, and a good illustration of your last point: if it *doesn't* make future changes cheaper (ie overengineering), it's not improving the quality.
(Of course, this isn't always easy to predict.)
The metaphor of cleaning the kitchen is a good one too: you can postpone it if you're hungry, since it's worse to do it when hungry, but it will be more work later.