On: AI is forcing us to pay off 40 years of technical debt

You've uncovered the kernel of the software industry- if it works well enough, don't touch it. This is why legacy software hangs around for longer than it should.

You can remove the word software from that and apply it to almost anything. The whole earth rests on legacy temp fixes.

Yep. Just like the old saying, "There's nothing more permanent than a temporary solution."