[acdha]

> Nobody codes things too complex on-purpose, at least not normal people. So it's not the difference in types of complexity, it's the difference in our ability to understand accidental and essential complexity.

It's not so simple — I've seen people create over-architected monsters because they thought everyone coded like some consultant's magazine article/talk/book claimed, because they were trying to be taken seriously and didn't think they could push back, because they had talked their way into a job they weren't qualified for and tossing around buzzwords was a way to obscure the fact that they had no idea what they were doing, because the client insisted that all real projects must run in the way the consultants in expensive suits assured them everyone serious runs them (ignoring massive differences in scope and resources or long term success), or because the institutional incentives made it easier to say their project would handle everything anyone had ever thought might be useful into one application rather than working with the actual users to build multiple smaller, simpler tools.

One way to think about that is that it's neither accidental nor essential complexity but environmental. Fixing that can be quite hard but it's often work the political capital if you have it because the alternatives might not be survivable.