When people hear the phrase “technical debt”, they often picture broken code, outdated infrastructure, or a total rewrite waiting to happen. But in our experience at Planet Argon, technical debt usually shows up more quietly.
It’s not a crisis. It’s a pattern.
It shows up in how long it takes to make changes, how often bugs sneak in, and how hesitant developers are to touch certain parts of the codebase. And while it rarely announces itself, it always costs something — whether in time, budget, or momentum.
In this post, we’ll highlight real-world examples of how technical debt has surfaced in Rails applications we’ve worked on. These aren’t horror stories — they’re common issues we see even in well-run projects. More importantly, we’ll share some ways teams can manage debt strategically without a massive rewrite.
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