Comment by analog31

I'm a scientist, working adjacent to a team of engineers.

My sense is that there's a "conceptual" austerity, due to the limited ability of the human mind to understand complex systems. The programmers are satisfied that the product is documented, because it passes tests, and "the source code expresses what the program does." But nobody can explain it to me, in situations where I have to be involved because something has gone wrong.

The system has surpassed some threshold of conceptual austerity when the majority of the devs have concluded that the only hope is to scrap it and start over, but they can't, because they don't know what it's supposed to do, and can't find out.

On the other hand, the infinite computer would take care of this for us too. We're faced with semi-infinite computers at the present time, that can be filled to the brim with stuff that they can't themselves understand or manage. But all real things are finite.