Technical debt is not malice

Technical debt is not the result of incompetence or laziness — it is the accumulated outcome of real constraints, trade-offs, and context that future developers were not present to witness. Empathy, reframed as a concrete technical skill rather than a soft skill, is essential for working with legacy systems effectively. Approaching legacy code with curiosity instead of contempt unlocks embedded domain knowledge, prevents wasteful rewrites, and enables incremental improvement. Practical habits like meaningful commit messages, ADRs, code comments explaining 'why', and tests that capture intent are acts of empathy toward future developers. The code written today will become tomorrow's legacy, and it deserves the same respect being advocated for now.