Developers talk about technical debt. It is simply the cost of past shortcuts, which makes every future change slower and riskier until it is paid down.
How it builds up
Debt appears whenever speed is chosen over care.
- A quick fix is left in place of a proper one
- Old parts are never updated
- Documentation is skipped
- Tests are never written
How you notice it
Small changes take longer than they should, fixing one thing breaks another and new developers need weeks to understand the system. Those are the interest payments.
Paying it down
Set aside a share of each release for cleaning up, rather than waiting for one big rewrite. Small, steady repayment keeps costs predictable.