I think about this all the time when it comes to evolving systems. I work on a programming language, and these tensions are core to my job. In the context of a

I think about this all the time when it comes to evolving systems. I work on a programming language, and these tensions are core to my job. In the context of a language, I think it can be: * Modern, where the language's features and idioms reflect the best way we know to write good, clean code today. * Compatible, where code written in the language years ago continues to run the same as when first written. * Simple, where the language has relatively few concepts that compose in clean ways and where there are few ways to accomplish the same goal. But you only get to pick two.