I find this a compelling view. But, I urge you, just google technical debt. You will see the definition: "Technical debt is a concept in programming that reflects the extra development work that arises when code that is easy to implement in the short run is used instead of applying the best overall solution."

So, in this case, AC/DC fits if we agree there is a chance the "best overall" solution is DC. (Which, I fully grant, is not a given.) There is also a bit of playing loose with "short run."

Then, skip back to the top of this thread, where you will find: "products that are written badly by inadequate teams" and "case of unpleasantness" and "A product is replaced (or intended to be replaced) by a new product that does more or less the same thing, only this time with a smart new team, in a hip new language..."

All of this is the first, most highly voted, post. The next post is a highlight of poorly engineered solutions.

My point? Find a case study that has the usage you are referring to here.

Now, certainly rhetorically it has this appeal to people. But I have never seen it used in a way that it fits the metaphor. Just used to hit the emotional strings of "you must pay back your debt!" While usually claiming that the design or lack of some technology is the debt.

I think we're going off on a tangent here, but even with that definition from Wikipedia, there's no such thing as "the best overall solution". Everyone is going to disagree about that; the best you'll get is a consensus. For instance, back to LaTeX, there's countless academics out there who use TeX/LaTeX/whateverTeX for writing academic papers, and getting beautiful results while not having to mess around with a WYSIWYG editor like MS Word and just typing in some simple formatting codes. That's what *TeX was designed for and has worked well for for ages. But I'm sure you'll find a few people who say this is bad because it's "old" and that they should switch to the latest MS Word for everything, and rewrite all their papers in the latest MS Word. If you look really hard, you might even find someone who thinks both are bad, and that all academics should rewrite everything in WordStar.

"The best overall solution" is up for debate. It's the same with programming languages; one team will say that C is the best overall solution for a certain problem, another team will say it's Python, another team will say it's one of the .NET languages. I'm sure you can find plenty of engineers who will claim that mission-critical real-time avionics systems or automotive ABS controllers should be redesigned to use x86 CPUs and run Windows and have the code written in C# instead of using C/C++ and running on a small RTOS on an embedded microcontroller.

The implication I see with your Wikipedia definition is that implementing something easy in the short run instead of something that really is the best overall solution will eventually lead to more work to fix the shortcomings of the quick-n-easy solution. So, like I said before, a "debt", because it has to be paid back eventually (with work). The problem I see is that not everyone agrees on what is the best overall solution, and unlike a money debt that's easily seen by looking at a dollar figure, the only way to really know how much "tech debt" you have is through experience, i.e. accumulating it and then finding out over time how much work you have to expend to fix things when your quick-n-easy solutions start having real, demonstrable problems. If your solution has no actual, demonstrable problem (e.g., you use LaTeX and it continues working great year after year for your use-case), then I don't consider that to be "tech debt" at all, even if some people don't like it.

I 100℅ agree regarding "best overall solution.". Indeed, in large that is my point.

Alternatives may have advantages. However, often the advantages of where one is at are ignored in the debate.

My gripe in this debate is more from actual uses of the term. Not from any ideal use of it.