Technical Debt Reflects Team Learning, Not Only Poor Engineering, Author Argues

Ben Linders argues in InfoQ that technical debt can be the cost of learning through software in use, not a sign of poor engineering. He contends that AI-driven code generation is outpacing teams' ability to understand code and its context, which turns technical debt into a sociotechnical problem rather than a purely technical one.

Why it matters: Delivery leaders who treat all technical debt as a failure may misjudge where it is worth paying down and where it reflects the team's learning curve, especially as AI speeds up code output.