But you can't demonstrate it to be untrue by picking specifically crafted examples (which, BTW, are simple not because of any advancements Brooks was talking ab

But you can't demonstrate it to be untrue by picking specifically crafted examples (which, BTW, are simple not because of any advancements Brooks was talking about in PL design and programming methodology, but due to hardware improvements and availability of OTS components). You could only demonstrate that by showing that most of the effort in software at large is of this kind, and that the improvement is due to language design and/or programming methodology. When distilled, Brooks's claim is that the relative size of accidental complexity in programming overall is (or was) "low", i.e. less than 90%, while Dan wants to claim it is (or was) "high", i.e. more than 90%. His experiment does not establish that.