Technical-Debt

Terraform does something uncomfortable very well. It preserves mistakes. At first, that feels like a problem. Over time, it becomes one of its biggest strengths. Before Terraform, Mistakes Were Ephemeral Before infrastructure lived in code, mistakes were scattered. Someone changed a setting in the portal. Someone applied a hotfix directly. Someone clicked a checkbox to make something work. Those mistakes disappeared into history. They could not be explained. They could not be repeated. They could not be intentionally fixed. ...

How small differences turn into big problems. Pipeline drift rarely starts intentionally. It starts with a small change. A special case. A temporary workaround. Then it sticks. Drift Is Hard to See Two pipelines look similar. They are not. Different flags. Different versions. Different checks. No one notices until behavior diverges. You have a standard pipeline template. Version 1.2. Most teams use it. A few are still on 1.1. One team forked it months ago and never updated. Another team copy-pasted the template and made “minor adjustments.” ...