> Engineers started working around the ratchet by hoarding dead code and disguising it to look "not dead" so that it could be easily removed later when a few do

> Engineers started working around the ratchet by hoarding dead code and disguising it to look "not dead" so that it could be easily removed later when a few dozen kilobytes were needed. Sounds like an example of the cobra effect[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect