Most of your tech debt is free

Almost every team I audit has a file like this: 1,900 lines, conditionals six levels deep, a comment at the top that just says &ldquo;careful.&rdquo; Once a quarter, someone floats rewriting it, and everyone nods like that&rsquo;s obviously the responsible thing to do.&#xA;Usually it isn&rsquo;t.&#xA;Maintainability debt charges interest when work runs through it. Security holes, unsupported…