Hacker News with Generative AI: Complexity

Ask HN: Do programmers generally enjoy some amount of complexity? (ycombinator.com)
Occured to me that sometimes, simple enough is not good enough for us programmers. It seems that sometimes we might actually enjoy grappling with complex, even byzantine systems. Can anyone relate? I'm not saying this is a thing, not even for myself...but I suspect it might be, possible.
Complex Systems Won't Survive the Competence Crisis (palladiummag.com)
At a casual glance, the recent cascades of American disasters might seem unrelated. In a span of fewer than six months in 2017, three U.S. Naval warships experienced three separate collisions resulting in 17 deaths. A year later, powerlines owned by PG&E started a wildfire that killed 85 people. The pipeline carrying almost half of the East Coast’s gasoline shut down due to a ransomware attack.
Sublinear Time Algorithms (csail.mit.edu)
We have long considered showing the existence of a linear time algorithm for a problem to be the gold standard of achievement.
Complex dynamics require complex solutions (mathstodon.xyz)
We are destroying software (antirez.com)
We are destroying software by no longer taking complexity into account when adding features or optimizing some dimension.
We've lost our respect for complexity (wilsoniumite.com)
I was talking recently to a friend about a video essayist I like, (Dan Olson of Folding Ideas) and when asked why I thought he was any good I pondered it for a moment and said “he has a lot of respect for complexity”.
C++, Complexity, and Compiler Bugs (azeemba.com)
I have worked on C++ for most of my professional career. Somehow, I have gotten more intimidated by the language the more I have learnt it. The language is very powerful but the power comes with a lot of emergent complexity that makes the language hard to contain. It feels like no individual even understands the full language. But individuals are supposed to read and write code in C++.
Postcards from the Peak of Complexity [video] (youtube.com)
Tog's Paradox (votito.com)
Tog’s Paradox (also known as The Complexity Paradox or Tog’s Complexity Paradox) is an observation that products aiming to make a task more efficient tend to inspire new, more complex use cases.
Daniel Lemire on the complexity of Java build tools (twitter.com)
Complexity as Design Material (arxiv.org)
Complexity is often seen as a inherent negative in information design, with the job of the designer being to reduce or eliminate complexity, and with principles like Tufte's "data-ink ratio" or "chartjunk" to operationalize minimalism and simplicity in visualizations.
Handling complexity without abstraction: Algebraic Bricklaying C (github.com/gritzko)
Merchants of Complexity (world.hey.com)
Merchants of Complexity (world.hey.com)
Merchants of Complexity (world.hey.com)
The First Law of Complexodynamics (2011) (scottaaronson.blog)
Complex systems emerge from simple rules (tecnica.substack.com)
Counting Complexity (2017) (breckyunits.com)
Reading dies in complexity: Online news consumers prefer simple writing (science.org)
A Note on Essential Complexity (olano.dev)
Complexity fills the space it's given (medium.com)
The new math of how large-scale order emerges (quantamagazine.org)
Three Laws of Software Complexity (bitbucket.io)
Simplicity is an advantage but sadly complexity sells better (2022) (eugeneyan.com)
Causality, Interaction, and Complexity (alexahn.com)