Let's be real about dependencies

I didn't expect to get much new out of the article (because I'm accustomed to noticing the complexity and wishing it weren't so), but I love this observation:

> There’s an interesting observation here: The biggest programs so far are the ones designed for humans to interact with. Turns out humans are complicated and making computers do things they want is hard. There’s the argument that humans need to learn computers better, with simpler and more composable primitives, and it will result in great benefits in smaller and more powerful programs. Then there’s the counter-argument that if a program is written once and used many, many times, the extra time a programmer puts into making the learning curve shallower will rapidly be made up for by the time saved by the users. Both these arguments are valid. “Design” is the art of striking a balance between them, and different people will want different balances.

I get that this isn't the main point the author was trying to make (about language/ecosystem comparison, surrounding their approaches to the dependency problem), but.

"So, what other solutions can we invent?"

I suppose containers or Ubuntu's snaps might be examples (for good or bad).