This doesn't really make sense to me. The dep graph is a second-order thing, a conceptual model that's emergent from the parameters to the imperative constructo

This doesn't really make sense to me. The dep graph is a second-order thing, a conceptual model that's emergent from the parameters to the imperative constructors. It's not a first-order thing that we manipulate directly. There's no way to even represent a graph in a text file without flattening it to some order, anyway. The point being made is that just writing the construction statements in the main method is exactly "declaratively specify[ing] that tree", and that "having to worry about how it is actually constructed" is incredibly valuable knowledge to maintainers, because it allows them to see explicitly how components are constructed, and how they interact with each other. It's not something you want to hide with a framework, it's something you want to lift up, front-and-center, so everyone can see it.