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The Conservation of Complexity: An Architect’s Perspective
Noise-canceling headphones don’t eliminate sound — they add precisely calibrated counter-signals to make noise less disruptive. This same principle applies directly to managing complexity in software systems. You can’t eliminate it, but you can control how it impacts your system.
This was initially posted in my newsletter BuildItSimple!, if you don’t have a medium membership, you can read it here:
The Reality of Complexity
Let’s be clear: complexity in software systems never truly disappears. Like energy in physics, it can’t be destroyed — only transformed, redirected, or redistributed. Every architectural decision we make either moves complexity around or changes its form.
What we can do, however, is influence how this complexity manifests and impacts our systems. Just as noise-canceling technology doesn’t eliminate sound waves but rather introduces counteracting patterns, our architectural decisions can either amplify or dampen the complexity waves rippling through our systems.
