Technical Debt Is Inevitable—How You Handle It Isn’t

The Impermanence of Software

All software, no matter how elegantly written or well-intentioned, eventually becomes “legacy” code. In tech, frameworks and tools that were shiny and new just a few years ago can feel outdated today. The truth is that all software eventually becomes legacy code. Technologies evolve, business needs shift, and what was once cutting-edge inevitably gets left behind or requires upkeep to stay relevant. I learned this early in my career: an app I helped build with the “latest” stack quickly showed its age as new stacks emerged. It was humbling to realize that impermanence is the rule, not the exception, in our industry.

It doesn’t matter how carefully we choose our programming language or how strictly we adhere to best practices – ultimately, most technology becomes technical debt one day. Today’s popular framework might be tomorrow’s legacy burden. Remember when AngularJS or jQuery ruled the front-end, or when Ruby on Rails was the hot new thing? Now, those tools are often (unfairly) spoken of with a hint of nostalgia or regret, replaced in conversation by newer frameworks. The impermanence of software is a tough pill to swallow for those of us who pour our hearts into building something “future-proof.” But accepting that change is constant is the first step toward a healthier relationship with our codebases.

Ironically, some of the oldest “legacy” systems continue to run silently behind the scenes, reminding us that new isn’t always better. Every day, about $3 trillion in transactions are handled by a 64-year-old programming language (COBOL). It’s astounding – and a little frightening – to realize how much of the world’s critical infrastructure relies on technologies from decades past. This isn’t to say we should write code expecting it to last 60 years unchanged, but it underscores that legacy software often remains the backbone of industries. The impermanence of most software is inevitable, yet some systems stick around far longer than anyone imagined, accumulating layer upon layer of fixes and patches as the world changes around them.

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Fast vs. Right: The Everlasting Tension

One of the biggest dilemmas developers face is the trade-off between building something quickly and building it right. Early in my career, I often felt this tension keenly. Should I take an extra week to refactor and perfect this feature, or ship it by Friday to keep up with business demands? The pressure to move fast and break things can be intense. Shipping new features brings visible progress, while refactoring or addressing technical debt is often invisible to stakeholders. Yet, if you only ever sprint ahead, you eventually pay the price with messy, hard-to-maintain systems.

The paradox is that even when you try to do everything right, the goalposts can move. You might follow all the best practices of today, architecting a system with flexibility and elegance, only to find that in a few years those practices are outdated. A framework upgrade or a new paradigm can render your well-architected app “legacy” overnight. I’ve seen applications that were meticulously built on a solid foundation suddenly feel antiquated when a new version of a framework came out.

On the flip side, charging ahead with a “build fast” mindset creates its own kind of baggage. In the rush to deliver, teams make compromises – maybe a hacky workaround here, a skipped test suite there – essentially borrowing time from the future. This is the classic definition of technical debt: you get something now (speed, features) at the cost of extra work later. The understanding (or hope) is that you can always pay that debt back later when you have time. The reality, unfortunately, is that “later” can be hard to schedule.

Culturally, the industry hasn’t always incentivized doing things the right way. A cynical joke I once heard (and felt uncomfortably seen by) is that in tech, “you don’t win by building well-architected apps. You win by shipping fast and moving on. It will be someone else’s problem soon.” In other words, the rewards often go to those who deliver new products quickly, even if it means leaving a mess for the maintainers down the road. I’ve worked on projects where the original developers had long since moved to the next shiny project, and it fell to me and my colleagues to deal with the tangle of issues left behind. It’s a common story: the tension between speed and sustainability, between delivering now and delivering well. And it’s not an easy balance to strike.

What I’ve come to realize is that this tension will always be there. No methodology or process completely eliminates it. Whether you’re Agile or Waterfall, lean startup or enterprise architect, you will face trade-offs. Ultimately, some form of technical debt is inevitable, regardless of your approach. The key is not to eliminate debt (an impossible goal), but to be intentional about when and how you take it on.

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Embracing Technical Debt as a Natural Lifecycle

For a long time, I viewed technical debt as a terrible thing – a sign of failure or bad engineering. But over the years, and especially after seeing multiple projects through their full life cycle, I’ve reframed how I think about it. In fact, I’ll say something that might sound heretical: technical debt is not only natural, it can be a sign of success.

Why would technical debt ever be good? Consider an application that’s been in production for five or ten years. If it has some gnarly corners and outdated modules, that means the app survived long enough to evolve and age. It likely has paying users or critical users; otherwise it would have been thrown out long ago. The mere fact that technical debt exists isn’t a sign of failure — it’s the opposite. It’s proof that your product was successful enough to need maintenance.

Furthermore, technical debt is as inevitable as a house’s wear and tear. If you move into a brand-new house, everything is pristine at first. But live in it for 5–10 years and you’ll start to see the roof needing repairs, the paint peeling, maybe the furnace is outdated. Software is no different. A codebase that’s a few years old will accumulate “dust” and “cracks” – perhaps a module that no one wants to touch because it’s brittle, or a dependency that’s several versions behind. Any home standing more than a decade needs maintenance, and any software running for a few years will have its share of bugs and quirks.

Realizing this truth changed my mindset. Instead of viewing technical debt as a stain on a project’s honor, I began to see it as a normal phase in the life of software. Like adolescence in people, it’s a bit awkward and messy, but it’s also a sign of growth.

Key lessons I’ve learned about technical debt:

• It’s inevitable
  
  
• It signals longevity
  
  
• Not all debt is bad
  
  
• Shame doesn’t help
  
  

When we see technical debt as a natural part of the lifecycle, we can approach it more rationally and less emotionally. In other words, we can manage technical debt much like we schedule regular oil changes and tune-ups for a car – not because the car is a failure, but because maintenance keeps it running longer.

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Reframing Legacy: My Journey at HeroDevs

My personal grappling with this truth reached a turning point when I joined HeroDevs. HeroDevs is a company whose whole mission is to support and extend the life of deprecated open-source software. In other words, it lives and breathes in the world of legacy frameworks.

When I first heard about this, I was both excited and a little skeptical. Excited, because it’s a bold approach to a big problem. Skeptical, because I, like many developers, had an ingrained bias: why not just upgrade to the latest thing?

Working at HeroDevs has been eye-opening. We work with clients who have huge, mission-critical applications written in frameworks like AngularJS, Vue 2, or Drupal 7 – technologies that the original creators have moved on from, but that companies still rely on every single day. It clicked for me. These organizations aren’t being lazy or stubborn. In many cases, it’s the pragmatic choice.

At HeroDevs, I’ve literally seen “technical debt” transformed into an asset. A framework that was supposed to be left for dead is now receiving updates and improvements again. This taught me an important lesson: legacy software isn’t worthless; it carries the knowledge and value of years of development.

I also learned to reframe the conversation around legacy software from “liability” to “asset.” I’ve come to appreciate that with the right strategy, an old system can be stable, dependable, and even innovative in its own way. With long-term support, legacy systems can be kept running smoothly, securely, and in compliance long after their official end-of-life.Just like an old house can be restored and revitalized with care and craftsmanship, so can aging software. What may look outdated on the surface often holds deep structural value underneath—it just needs the right team to maintain it.

This shift in mindset was personal for me. I went from dreading work on older code to honoring it. That legacy software is often the result of countless developer-hours and solved problems. Does it have quirks? Sure. Could parts of it be better? Absolutely. But throwing it all away now feels like throwing away hard-earned wisdom.

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What “Sustainability” Means in the Web Age

Sustainability in software is about creating systems that can endure – software that remains useful and maintainable over the long haul. It’s an antidote to the throwaway culture of tech.

To me, a sustainable approach means:

• Being deliberate about adoption
  
  
• Designing for change
  
  
• Investing in maintenance
  
  
• Leveraging long-term support
  
  

Underlying all of this is a philosophy of respect for legacy and commitment to longevity. In the web age, taking a sustainable approach is almost a rebel stance. It’s saying: “I refuse to believe that we must destroy and rewrite everything continuously.”

Sustainability also has a human dimension. Developers burn out trying to keep pace with the relentless change. On one project, we were evaluating two frameworks—one was shiny, new, and hyped; the other was older but stable, maintained, and well-understood. We chose the older one. Why? Because we weren’t willing to bet our product's future on a tool whose creators we didn’t know or trust. It wasn’t end-of-life, just a bit behind the trend—and that was okay. It gave us confidence in long-term viability, and that sense of stability was a breath of fresh air for the team. By embracing sustainability, we give ourselves and our systems the grace to grow, evolve, and endure.

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Conclusion: Legacy Is Not a Dirty Word

Coming to terms with the idea that everything I build will one day be technical debt has been a personal and professional journey. It’s a journey from idealism to pragmatism, from chasing the new-new thing to respecting the tried-and-true.

If you’re wrestling with a legacy system or drowning in technical debt, you’re not alone, and you haven’t failed. In fact, you’re in the same boat as every successful software project that lasted beyond its honeymoon phase.

Everything will one day be technical debt – and that’s okay. When we acknowledge that, we can stop fearing the legacy label. Instead, we can manage technical debt smartly, extend the life of the software that still works, and carve out a sustainable path forward.

My time at HeroDevs has shown me that yesterday’s code can have a vibrant tomorrow if we choose to invest in it. Legacy is not a dirty word; it’s simply the later chapters of a success story. And if we treat those chapters with the care and respect they deserve, we can create software systems—and careers—that truly stand the test of time.

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