Comparison
CruftvsTechnical debt
Cruft
there is a dead flag, three commented-out blocks and a helper nobody has called since 2022.
Code that is simply badly made: unclear, redundant, dead, or wrong in ways that were avoidable at the time. It is worth keeping distinct from technical debt because the two have different conversations — debt was a deliberate trade for speed and can be defended, while cruft was never a trade and has no upside to weigh. Calling cruft 'tech debt' is how teams end up arguing about priorities instead of just cleaning up.
Full entry →Technical debt
you shipped the quick version to make the date, wrote down what you skipped, and paid for it every sprint after.
A deliberate trade of future ease for present speed, taken knowingly. The metaphor is load-bearing: debt has a principal and interest, taking it can be correct, and the danger is unserviced interest rather than the borrowing itself. Used precisely it is one of the few ways to make a technical argument financially legible to people who do not read code; used as a synonym for 'code I dislike' it stops working entirely.
Full entry →