The Tyranny of Code.

Large codebases inevitably calcify and stifle innovation as they grow, creating a tyranny where adding new features becomes increasingly difficult. The author argues that successful projects face an unavoidable dilemma: early flexibility gives way to rigid, hard-to-change code as teams grow and user demands increase. Solutions include enforcing strict size limits on code modules, avoiding false abstractions that don't truly isolate complexity, and recognizing that most modern development tools actually enable larger, more complex codebases rather than solving the fundamental problem. The key insight is that fighting code calcification is primarily a cultural challenge requiring discipline to stop writing code rather than a technical tooling problem.