I read a book about the immune system and it’s actually insane how much tech debt there is in there. We have several systems, each one built a hundred million years after the previous one. Each one targets the kind of threats that were prevalent then but are still there because they haven’t completely disappeared. So much complexity, and systems can go haywire so easily - autoimmune diseases, allergic reactions and so on.

And yet, like a startup that found product market fit with a garbage tech stack, this pile of jenga spaghetti is still going strong. Complexity doesn’t matter, people dying because they looked at a peanut doesn’t matter - ultimately this spaghetti works well enough to get humans to where we are today.

It doesn't really. The START and STOP codons define clear cut frames for your cells to use. Think of your DNA like ECC memory. There's a bunch of extra stuff in there which makes it suitable for use as a memory storage. It has nothing to do with the actual replicated genes and their associated proteins or the role of those within the body.

The really cool part about that storage is it is environmentally sensitive. So as the environment changes around your DNA it's shape slightly changes and so the available START sites also change which alters the types and numbers of genes that are copied for use.

Biology isn't one system it's dozens all stacked and layered on top of each other. It's like trying to understand computing by watching what individual electrons do. Of course it looks messy. On the larger scale it's far more elegant.

We just haven't found God's IDE yet

well, if we look at in-memory processes or kernel, or on data on HDD disk tracks, it's kinda also awfully resembles spaghetti :)