@simon @rotnroll666 In my experience no, they're basically the same. Or at least parts of the same process. Technical debt is generally paid down by: 1. trying to figure out what the code is supposed to do 2. communicating that to other people (it's often wrong, particularly on edge cases! and you can be wrong about what it does too) 3. making a plan around what to fix first and how (budgets! timeframes!) 4. and *then* writing / deleting / organising code, improving documentation, testing, etc etc. "Cognitive debt" is just a fancy name for the issues raised in steps 1 and 2, but it's all technical debt.