[PeterisP]

It's more likely the natural entropy of code - it's easy to add stuff to a system in a way that makes it more messy; and if the system already is a big mess, then it's much harder to do non-messy additions and the bigger mess it is, the harder it is to start cleaning it up.

[portal_narlish]

I refer to this as the "spaghetti law of attraction". The burden of refactoring things gets higher and higher and no one wants to touch it. So they just add another try-catch block and do some side effect and get the PR merged.

[time-traveler]

It is also a question of management, it is easier to motivate adding new features instead of keeping thing nice and tidy. Especially as finding good abstractions are very hard and time-consuming.

[hef19898]

True that. Adding complexity is easy, keeping things at the right level of simplicity is hard work and requires skill. Not just for coding.

[gbersac]

This is the real answer !