> what I came to call “the Law of Conservation of Ugly”. In many software problems, there’s a part that just is never going to feel elegant
This may be an instance of the Waterbed Principle: in any sufficiently-complex system, suppressing or refactoring some undesirable characteristic in one area inevitably causes an undesirability to pop up somewhere else. Like there is some minimum amount of complexity/ugliness/etc that it is possible for the entire system to contain while still carrying out its essential functions, and it must leak out somewhere.
This may be an instance of the Waterbed Principle: in any sufficiently-complex system, suppressing or refactoring some undesirable characteristic in one area inevitably causes an undesirability to pop up somewhere else. Like there is some minimum amount of complexity/ugliness/etc that it is possible for the entire system to contain while still carrying out its essential functions, and it must leak out somewhere.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterbed_theory