Conway's insight, and the subsequent law that bears his name, was so laser-precise that it is uncanny. Local incentives matter too. In any social system there'

Conway's insight, and the subsequent law that bears his name, was so laser-precise that it is uncanny. Local incentives matter too. In any social system there's an incentive to "flexing your muscles" and showing off our abilities, since that helps to build prestige and respect. When coding moves away from "impact", and "scaling" and "agility" and back to old fuddy-duddy engineering staples like better up-front design, partitioning problems properly and solving them in toto before shipping (i.e. doing it right the first time), allocating the right problems to the right people--difficult to do in a team with junior members that need space to grow and experts that can dash things out in minutes--then we'll hopefully be sober enough to see through cargo cult practices down to what works.