The #1 thing we need is a paradigm shift w.r.t complexity. We know that complexity, as the number ofvthongs you need to keep in mind to see the big picture, gro

The #1 thing we need is a paradigm shift w.r.t complexity. We know that complexity, as the number ofvthongs you need to keep in mind to see the big picture, grows with the size of the project, but that growth varies greatly. A bad programmer writes code in such a way that complexity grows quadratically: it quickly crosses the threshold of being understandable by anyone and then the project is better to be redone. A decent programmer keeps the complexity linear by separating it into pieces with clear interfaces and behaviors. A great programmer can keep this growth sublinear, logarithmic maybe, but it's an art - this is what makes huge projects possible (linux, etc.) The paradigm shift would be a formal way to enforce low complexity growth, so even mediocre programmers can't f-k it up, similar to how syntax correctness is enforced. The #2 thing is documentation, which is in a very sad state right now: everyone writes boatloads of unstructured text that vaguely amd loosely explains something, and newcomers have to either parse this mess, or ask those who know for a digestible summary. This happens because text, the way we write it, poorly represents our thought models. We've learned to split text into words, words into paragraphs, and paragraphs into chapters, and we've even invented content tables, but all that isn't enough to deal with the enormous complexity of software we have today.