The Programmer's Paradox: Systems Thinking

A blog about software development and programming.

The Programmer's Paradox: Systems Thinking Thursday, February 5, 2026 Systems Thinking There are two main schools of thought in software development about how to build really big, complicated stuff. The most prevalent one, these days, is that you gradually evolve the complexity over time. You start small and keep adding to it. The other school is that you lay out a huge specification that would fully work through all of the complexity in advance, then build it. In a sense, it is the difference between the way an entrepreneur might approach doing a startup versus how we build modern skyscrapers

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