60 karma · joined August 16, 2019
Chomsky's comment here is neither false nor rationalising the attacks. I am not a particular fan of Chomsky (but I am on "the left") but this article is an especially weak attack on him.
While there's no doubt there are some libraries/tools/systems which are poorly designed, perceived complexity may often be due to the requirement to support a wide variety of new and legacy systems or to support layers of the tech stack that many people are not even aware of.
"We've just chosen to keep things like this because we think it makes us clever."
If I could make my job any simpler I would jump at the opportunity. Personally I often marvel at how relatively quick and easy it is to quickly develop useful programs.
Perhaps if you try implementing some of these more simple tools the reasons for the underlying complexity will reveal themselves.
https://detexify.kirelabs.org/classify.html.
Then just need to look up the Latex on Wikipedia:
Libraries for handling time would need to include functions for converting times between frames.