> but the interconnectedness and therefore state space will explode polynomially without applying encapsulation and local reasoning

I wish the complexity demon was this gentle. It's exponential generally – a single boolean flag can double the test/state space.

The only thing that really matters long term is taming complexity. Humans fail at this and that’s why large companies need to hire armies of big fixers and QA to play whack-a-mole with the symptoms rather than the causes.

LLMs make both tasks faster, but it also changes the balance between them. I would be wary of replacing a company of 5 wizards, 20 seniors and 100 juniors with 10000 juniors overnight.