[zzzeek]

> And parts of it are just so horribly over-engineered it is scary, because it makes me wonder what it is they're missing to think it was necessary to make things that convoluted, and what they're missing because they've made it so convoluted.

So the source code for Amazon Web Services is clearly architected, free of cruft and under-/over-engineering? I assume you've worked with AWS's source code in order to be able to make such a comparison. In my experience, the design and architecture of closed-source internal applications delivered to customers only as a front-end is usually a nightmare.