I think there's a bit of a problem with the architecture metaphor in general. It implies a limited range of things planned and built. As software eats the world

I think there's a bit of a problem with the architecture metaphor in general. It implies a limited range of things planned and built. As software eats the world and does more and more things, a metaphor that more closely reflects the variety of software is people telling other people to do stuff. If you tell someone to bring you your socks, you don't need to plan for it. If they bring the wrong socks, you just fix it. If you tell them to invade the beaches at Normandy, you might want to work out more of the details in advance. You can tell someone to remove a splinter or remove a brain tumor, and your part of the instructions might be roughly equivalent if you are telling an "API" that has already been adequately told how to do what you ask. The problem of unintended consequences of instructions has been with us far longer than computer software. In any story of a magic jini granting three wishes, the third wish always ended up a version of `git reset --hard`. I love having direct manipulation tools that simulate your proposed solution, giving you much faster feedback. Midas with VR goggles would have quickly seen something unintended turn to gold and canceled before committing. That's extremely helpful. But this isn't the ultimate solution for how to deal with software complexity. It's a very helpful tool in some cases. Some software should still just be coded immediately and fixed as needed (takes less time to do it again than to create a simulator), some would benefit most from a good, debugged library (I'd rather the robot already know how to remove the tumor than show me direct feedback of my fumbling), some from direct manipulation tools, some from mathematical techniques (remembering that mathematically proven software is buggy if an errant RAM chip violates the axiom that `0=0`), some from better testing, some from better runtime monitoring, and so on. But as with humans' verbal instructions, there will always be leftover unanticipated consequences due to flaws in the spec, bugs in the code, and breakage in the implementation.