I agree with you. It's not about surface level complexity. Some modern language complexity is abstraction that allow us more complexity while still being manag

I agree with you. It's not about surface level complexity. Some modern language complexity is abstraction that allow us more complexity while still being manageable. You are spot on about "schemaless" databases. I would also add "Patterns". When the compiler doesn't provide enough features, the programmer has to do some of the work the compiler would do. This extra work are the software patterns. Functions are a software pattern in assembler. They are a language feature in structured programming languages. ADT are a software pattern in structured programming languages. ADT are a language feature in object-oriented programming languages. And so on...