Everything is simple. There is just a lot of it. That's pretty much my view of internet and web technologies over time. It all did work, it all continues to w

Everything is simple. There is just a lot of it. That's pretty much my view of internet and web technologies over time. It all did work, it all continues to work, to address security/performance/convenience we collectively add a few more little simple features/workarounds/quirks. But ultimately the perception of the hackery of it all really stems from: 1. Quantity. There's a lot of stuff, it all works to some definition of "works" and there is typically more than one way of doing something. 2. Quality. When things are made, they are made for that time. As time goes by we can more clearly see the ambiguity of something, or the incompleteness of a feature, but by then it's too late and it's set in stone, our fix is usually to add something new (see #1).