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> Without trying to manage complexity, it becomes impossible to build real systems.

Managing complexity is necessary for human designers and the limitations of their brains. Nature appears to be able to evolve more and more complex mechanisms by random mutation + Darwinian selection. It remains an open problem if there is an upper bound for the level of complexity that such a mechanism is able to generate.

> Well, yes, to a degree.

Any computation is equivalent to the operation of a machine (as Turing and Church demonstrated). A computer program is a representation of the configuration of a machine.

The problem is that people underestimate how deep the concept of machine is (for example, by not being aware of Gödel's work).

> But if you arbitrarily change a word in a 1000 page book, the book will not fall apart.

This is a property of a type of program (the typical type that humans create). Many algorithms are known that can be much more tolerant to random perturbations (e.g neural networks). It just so happens humans are better at designing linear, synchronous mechanisms.

>> Mechanism holds that every aspect of the world can be represented as a simple hierarchical structure of entities. But, while useful in fields like mathematics and manufacturing, this idea is generally worthless, because most aspects of the world are too complex to be reduced to simple structures.

>Without trying to manage complexity, it becomes impossible to build real systems.

Both of you are correct. The real world is too complex to be modeled, and without trying, you can't build a real system. The answer to the conundrum that real systems include humans, which can handle the hard-to-model parts.

The author appears to be using bombastic language to communicate what is actually a simple point. I see the technique used often. There's a method to the madness. It's the long-form version of "to get someone to give you a correct answer on the Internet, post a wrong answer rather than just ask." Spiritual books are often written like this. Without a blend of the overly pedantic and the utterly simple, the reader won't be compelled to dissect what the author has written and won't have the intended epiphany where the reader discovers it wasn't as simple as he thought.

This is also the impression i get from the first chapter where his point seems to be that no amount of hip software methodologies can replace an intelligent, experienced software engineer.

Seems it avoids conspiracy theory in the first few pages: "This book attacks the mechanistic myth, not persons. Myths, however, manifest themselves through the acts of persons, so it is impossible to discuss the mechanistic myth without also referring to the persons affected by it."

Skimming through the book, personally I'm sympathetic to its approach and would probably learn much from it. (I happen to disagree with very many conclusions, but fine.) The discussion of irrationality and mana in dev seems useful... and morbidly hilarious.

>> similar to how we would reject a conspiracy theory

I fully agree that this book is lacking in rational arguments. But I IMHO you are not using the phrase "conspiracy theory" correctly. There are a lot of conspiracies out there. E.g. the wage fixing between Google, Oracle and Microsoft is on the YHN front page today.