> I would chalk up to Dr. Hipp has been consciousness about maintaining compatibility over the long term.

I agree. I am not suggesting that the SQLite team doesn't know how to make the technology better. Just that they aren't/haven't. Backwards compatibility is a good reason not to.

My original comment was contrasting craftsmanship and utility, since both are somewhat prized on HN, but they aren't the same thing at all. Look at a system like Wireguard. A huge amount of small decisions went into making that as simple and secure as it is. When most developers are confronted with similar decisions, they perform almost randomly and accumulate complexity over the long tail of decisions (it doesn't matter just pick a way). With Wireguard, every design decision reliably drove toward simplicity (it does matter, choose carefully).