There Is No Such Thing as “We Will Delete It Later”

This article is adapted from a post I shared on LinkedIn.

A test email address added into the code with a “we’ll clean it up later”… Spoiler: it was never cleaned up.

And it’s not even in the database; it waves at me straight from the source code. However you look at it, it’s 5-6 years old. Part of me is proud — the system still works; the other part notes there isn’t even an unsubscribe. 😅

In software, nothing is truly temporary. The lesson is clear: there is no such thing as “we’ll delete it later.” The solutions we think are temporary are often the most permanent ones. So today’s little shortcut is tomorrow’s technical debt.