I had a massive, tanklike ETL I had designed. Over-engineered, really. It was built to keep truckin' as best it could and issue instructions on what was wrong

I had a massive, tanklike ETL I had designed. Over-engineered, really. It was built to keep truckin' as best it could and issue instructions on what was wrong, exactly where, how to fix it, and so on. Missing data? Call one of these three people. Also, here's the file where you update if these people have left. Warnings over errors, errors over terminating. Pored over it, working out edge cases, then corner cases, then situations I was told would "never" happen. Then it was set free like a strandbeest to do its thing, only receiving reports, occasional requests for more data. Finally, something odd came up in warnings, but not in errors, and I was shocked. How did the system handle this? Got a little curious ... I guess I had a good day here and a good day there, because although I currently did not "get it," the program did. My contributions had built something which was not merely consistent, but collectively had become smarter than I for this problem. I think my little process was its own super intelligence in its hyper-specific niche.