TITLE: Another Peter Principle-Like Observation AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford DATE: June 28, 2019 3:39 PM DESC: ----- BODY: Raganwald tweeted:

If you design a language for people who have a talent for managing accidental complexity, you'll beget more and more accidental complexity over time.

Someone who can manage accidental complexity will always take on more if it makes them more productive.

This reminded me of a blog post from last November in which I half-jokingly coined The Peter Principle of Software Growth:

Software grows until it exceeds our capacity to understand it.

In the case of Raganwald's tweet, languages that enable us to handle accidental complexity well lead to more accidental complexity, because the people who use them will be more be more ambitious -- until they reach their saturation point. Both of these observations about software resemble the original Peter Principle, in which people who succeed are promoted until they reach a point at which they can't, or don't, succeed. I am happy to dub Raganwald's observation "The Peter Principle of Accidental Complexity", but after three examples, I begin to recognize a pattern... Is there a general name for this phenomenon, in which successful actors advance or evolve naturally until they reach a point at which the can't, or don't, succeed? If you have any ideas, please email me or respond on Twitter. In a playful mood at the end of a strange and hectic week, I am now wondering whether there is a Peter Principle of Peter Principles. -----