Honestly, the complexity of most systems I've worked on those last 15 years has only grown. Everything require umpteen libraries to show a char on screen (and be inefficient at that). We're still blocked in the 80's for a lot of protocols because of backward compatibility with a ton of hack on top of it. We have built tool on top of other tool to manage the mess we've created, that no one understand at the end.

That's where we're losing time. Dealing with an inherited mess.