[Koshkin]

It shouldn't be just about software. Hardware has become astonishingly complex as well. Forget about a high quality superhet radio containing 15 transistors, or a CPU with a manageable instruction set and an assembler that is a pleasure for a human to write in. No doubt modern systems are better than old ones, but I miss those times somehow...

[no_flags]

Is that a bad thing though? Modern CPUs seem to be incredibly reliable. I think much of the complexity has to do with the the fact that all the low hanging performance improvements have long since been implemented. To continue to get faster, sometimes the only option is to increase the complexity of the design.