alt Hacker NewsGall's Law:
"A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked."
https://lawsofsoftwareengineering.com/laws/galls-law/
In my naive youth I always thought top-down design was the sensible way to build systems. But after witnessing so many of them fail miserably, I now agree with Gall.
Well said. And similarly, it always seems to be the simple, bottom up, “let’s just build something simple and minimal that works” projects that get iterated on that do can do well, and start to strain when the technical debt and complexity accumulate.