<i>You&#x27;ve effectively created a sort of portable assembly language</i><p>Exactly. The verbosity is mostly because of my teaching project. I think teaching assembly can be just as ergonomic as teaching a high-level language. Indeed, most of us from a generation ago learned programming using assembly. It just needs to get a little more ergonomic.<p><i>the solution is to encourage reducing complexity.</i><p>Yup. The problem is that human beings have a _terrible_ track record at managing complexity. It&#x27;s not just every software project ever; think about the creep of bureaucracy in ancient China, or the creep of legislation in ancient Rome. Everytime we&#x27;ve created a repository of rules it&#x27;s gotten complex (and then gamed by smart operators). I think the problem is that it&#x27;s very hard to justify removing a rule, so such repositories grow monotonically. The only way to periodically prune unnecessary rules is to first track why you created them in the first place (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Wikipedia:Chesterton&#x27;s_fence" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Wikipedia:Chesterton&#x27;s_fence</a>). Hence: tests! I think they are the great advance bequeathed to the human race by software. And they&#x27;re far more broadly applicable outside software -- though I have no idea how to do this applying. I wrote up some speculative ideas about it at <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ribbonfarm.com&#x2F;2014&#x2F;04&#x2F;09&#x2F;the-legibility-tradeoff" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ribbonfarm.com&#x2F;2014&#x2F;04&#x2F;09&#x2F;the-legibility-tradeoff</a> a couple of years ago, but that piece isn&#x27;t very clear.