I think there is a lot of truth to this caricature, but it rubs me wrong the way you are painting the "later" programmers as blinded by fashion or tradition. "Geniuses vs ignorant sheeple" is a false dichotomy.
Yes, in some similar situations, some programmers will see things that way. But have some faith and respect for individuals' abilities to reason and apply their experience. As you implied, these kinds of systems are often optimized so that one person could run them.
So it's often a trade off — "this would not be easy for a medium or a large team to work on, but it's the easiest thing for me as an individual to maintain by myself that gets the job done." And that's OK. And yes, it is natural to shift over time. But this is precisely because you now want 40 developers maintaining it instead of 1.
Overengineering is real. But architectural tradeoffs that don't work well for large teams are real too.
Yes, in some similar situations, some programmers will see things that way. But have some faith and respect for individuals' abilities to reason and apply their experience. As you implied, these kinds of systems are often optimized so that one person could run them.
So it's often a trade off — "this would not be easy for a medium or a large team to work on, but it's the easiest thing for me as an individual to maintain by myself that gets the job done." And that's OK. And yes, it is natural to shift over time. But this is precisely because you now want 40 developers maintaining it instead of 1.
Overengineering is real. But architectural tradeoffs that don't work well for large teams are real too.