Architecture & practice·Complexity and how it accumulates
the rules really are that fiddly, because tax law is that fiddly, and no rewrite will make them simpler.
Essential complexity
Also calledinherent complexity
The complexity that belongs to the problem itself and would exist in any correct solution. Pricing with regional tax rules, a booking system with cancellations, a payroll with statutory edge cases — none of that shrinks when you change language or framework. Naming it matters because it ends a certain kind of unproductive argument: you cannot design this away, you can only decide where to put it.