Technical Debt and Scalability Considerations Questions

Explain the concept of technical debt, its root causes, and the long term cost of quick fixes versus sustainable solutions. Discuss scalability considerations including capacity planning, performance bottlenecks, architecture patterns for horizontal scaling, caching and partitioning strategies, and the trade offs between rapid delivery and long term maintainability. Cover the role of automated testing, monitoring and observability, and prioritization frameworks for when to pay down debt versus when to accept it for business reasons.