On complexity
I have been thinking about complexity recently. An engineer friend of mine told me that there was around 160 kbytes of code in a toothbrush. That is mindblowing! I freaking toothbrush has more code that the first modem I worked on. The starting point for thinking about complexity is the fact that our lives are surrounded by complexity of all kinds, more than at any time in our existence, and most people are unaware of it. Some cars have over 50 microprocessors doing a variety of things. The original IBM PC had a two microprocessors, the main one and one to run the keyboard. The average PC now has multiple processors in the disk drives, running the keyboard and mouse and other peripherals. Each USB device contains at least one processor.
The point is that there are processors everywhere and they all use code and they contribute to the complexity in our lives.
On this page, I will try to define the complexity that I see, the way that it is currently managed and now I think it should be managed.