I didn't say "irreducible" at all - just that software naturally gravitates towards nonessential complexity. Avoiding that takes skill, hard work, constant vigi

I didn't say "irreducible" at all - just that software naturally gravitates towards nonessential complexity. Avoiding that takes skill, hard work, constant vigilance, and the humility, willingness and ability to go back and redo things. Because it's easy to get it wrong and overengineer something in the name of managing complexity, or because you didn't know or misunderstood something about the problem domain. There's your "historical accidents". And "short term economic incentives" is just a dismissive way to say that having working software now is a hell of a lot more useful than perfect software at an unknowable time in the future.