I've had this latent thought for a while that I'm finally putting to words:
The complexity goes somewhere.
It's either into lots tests, or it's into something like shuttle style with lots of comments, or it's into a huge QA department, or it's into the type system / DB schema. It could even be going into the org structure!
But something, somewhere is handling the complexity and it is doing so as a partial function to the economic importance of the software to the stakeholders of the software.
The complexity goes somewhere.
It's either into lots tests, or it's into something like shuttle style with lots of comments, or it's into a huge QA department, or it's into the type system / DB schema. It could even be going into the org structure!
But something, somewhere is handling the complexity and it is doing so as a partial function to the economic importance of the software to the stakeholders of the software.