All this complexity is a sure sign that our trade is growing up. We've been around for long enough that the world depends on multigenerational legacy systems w

All this complexity is a sure sign that our trade is growing up. We've been around for long enough that the world depends on multigenerational legacy systems we've created. The economics of developing and maintaining all kinds of systems push us in the direction of easy-to-inspect and easy-to-develop code rather than highly optimized code. We use existing systems (like SQL, like UNIX derivatives, like various internet protocols, like git, like Ruby, Javascript and the rest) because they're almost completely debugged, even if they're sometimes clunky. Even if it's hard to maintain our mission-critical legacy systems, it's not as hard as maintaining the signaling in the New York City subways. Yet. And nobody HAS to use Gnome or the wizziest GUI sugar on other systems. Yes, it's discouraging when things don't work smoothly. But our job, as hackers, is to do our best to keep things running.