"A complex system designed from scratch never works"
This is based on the work of John Gall who I've never read and cannot comment on. However he was a pediatrician who has never gone near software, I wonder how relevant the personal anecdotes and experience his books draw their conclusions from are.
Also what is his definition of complex relating to the above quote? I'm assuming he could plot a graph with complexity along one axis and utility of starting from scratch along the other. At some point it might cross a certain threshold.
Also is there much in software development that could really be considered 'complex'? or, how does complexity scale in software?
Software could be described as "1000 layers of abstraction" if you are, say, re-writing a program in a high level language you are not starting your system from scratch. All the lower level elements of how it is assembled, run on the computer + all the protocols/ libraries drivers etc. used in the system are not changing.
