[throwawaylala1]

> The real world is messy, as much as programmers want to think it's not.

You hit the nail on the head with the whole comment and that line in particular.

I'll add that one of the most effective ways to deal with some of the messiness/complexity is simply to avoid it. Doing that is easier said than done these days because complexity is often introduced through a dependency. Or perhaps the benefits of adopting some popular architecture (eg: containerization) is hiding the complexity within.

> It's because system design is a lot less theoretically clean

Yea this is a major problem. It's sort of a dark art.