But The Code Does Work

The hard truth nobody wants to hear during code reviews. That spaghetti mess of nested if-statements and global variables might run without crashing, but so does a car with no oil... for a while. The junior dev's favorite defense "but it works on my machine" meets its philosophical nemesis. Sure, your duct-taped monstrosity passes the tests today, but wait until 3am when production is burning and future-you is cursing past-you's name while downing the fifth espresso. Technical debt doesn't charge interest—it sends loan sharks.