This is a dichotomy. Complexity is really many choices and detailed control. The real barrier to simplicity is reaching a firm decision. You either have flexibi

This is a dichotomy. Complexity is really many choices and detailed control. The real barrier to simplicity is reaching a firm decision. You either have flexibility or simplicity. Once the larger community decides what it wants, and how to do it, all the complexity disappears inside the machinery. Writing web-apps doesn't require low-level network wrangling, because the choice of TCP/IP etc. has been made: you simply use it as it is given. The higher levels of web-apps still present more complexity than they ought, though -- so we still haven't made enough limiting choices. Overall though, the prognosis would seem bad: It is the essence of software to be parameterisable, to be changable. So it will always be able to produce choices at a greater rate than they can be well-chosen.