[davidgl]

Is it more complicated though ? I've been developing for over 30 years, and I don't feel like its got any worse, I think it's the nature of the medium.

These days I fight with npm or nuget dependencies problems, 20 years ago I was trying to write Delphi code to do simple REST requests, the complexity moves around but is still there.

Out of the Tar Pit (http://curtclifton.net/papers/MoseleyMarks06a.pdf) was written 15 years ago, and it's all about curbing complexity

[ratww]

I think this is an example of simple vs easy. Writing request code 20 years ago was harder, because you needed to read docs and write a lot by hand. But it was simpler because it didn't add any additional hidden complexity from libraries or whatnot. At least in most languages it got better: we only need something simple and easy, like Javascript's fetch. Does complexity we don't have to maintain count?

About Out of the Tar Pit, complexity manifests itself in various shapes. The essay itself lists some that have gotten better: state is one, with people using more functional code. The "Power corrupts" part has also gotten better, IMO, with languages becoming simpler (Go) or more restrictive (Rust).

I think the "Code Volume" part is still a big one. One thing I'd like to see curbed to avoid code volume are the proliferation of code for handling edge cases. Having libraries and code able to handle tens of edge cases is both a blessing a curse. However most developers and business people can only see the blessing part.