> Modern CPUs are monstrously complex, for example. But not all of that complexity is good. For example, things like branch-prediction vulnerabilities exist a

> Modern CPUs are monstrously complex, for example. But not all of that complexity is good. For example, things like branch-prediction vulnerabilities exist as a result of that complexity, which makes it extremely difficult to reason about the entire system and predict which interacting systems might lead to security issues. And it looks as if some of the complexity of the x86_64 instruction set is a liability with respect to performance compared to "simpler" instruction sets like ARM. Also with regard to Rust, the more that I write, the more that I wonder if some of that complexity is due to unsolved design problems in the core of the language. For instance, once you start introducing data structures with references inside, this starts to introduce all kinds of complexity, which baloons when these kinds of types start interacting with other systems like async. I am not expert enough to know what the solution would be, or to know if these types of problems really could be avoided, but Rust sometimes feels like a language which is missing that one key piece which would keep all of this complexity under control.