At the risk of stating the obvious, (b) doesn&#x27;t progress because it&#x27;s more expensive and often unnecessary. In the cases where it would be useful, when TCO incorporating whole lifecycle costs such as maintenance and&#x2F;or rebuilds are considered, (b) is still often a failure because it requires higher lead time and up front investment. That&#x27;s not to say there&#x27;s no space for very carefully built systems, just that they&#x27;re a niche and likely always will be, particularly as hardware is now basically free and improved tooling (eg. popularization of CI) helps to reduce the difference between one-off hacks and &quot;robust, maintainable&quot; systems built with knowledge of prior work and theory.