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I agree and in fact i think this sentence is a self-contradiction in some way :

If you want a "big longstanding" project, then doing "complex" thing is probably the thing you want to avoid at all cost. And as a proof that it's possible, one can have a look at the standard library, which is big, longstanding and is the most readable std lib i've ever seen.

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So when is it appropriate to do complex things?

HPC where you try to wring the last ounce of performance from machines insufficiently powerful for the task. Weather forecasting, weapons simulation, protein folding...

That's interesting. I don't think as optimized memory manipulation via convoluted casting and such as "complex stuff". I think of that as optimization.

I thought what the author meant by complex was a gigantic system that needs to use many design patterns for good reasons; the code models a very complex, convoluted domain.

When you prototype. But once it reaches production, you should hopefuly have managed to reduce the complexity to its bare minimum

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