But if it functions fine and you don't have taste or want to be opinionated, why do you care?

> tell me about chimp violence

It's laughably terrible

> "At some point, one man quietly pulled me aside and suggested that if I "gave something," they could help solve the problem more easily.".

You can pay that fee/bribe and things will go smoothly.

But more generally my thought was that the western idea is that bureaucracy rules are something to be followed and, even if painful, are the path to getting the state to provide the services. In Uganda, it's better to model bureaucracy as a system that exists to enable bribes and following the rules to the letter and expecting state services is fighting the system.

If you want to get goods to someone in Uganda, don't talk to the Australian Post about the rules, talk to a Ugandan importer who knows how to actually work the system that exists in practice.

Caveats about broad brushes of course, but that's the realistic approach IMO.

But I think the comparison is closer than you are making it sound. I sincerely doubt the Windows codebase was all written by humans, let alone reviewed. And my understanding is that the code is being regularly rewritten and replaced because of how flawed it is, it's just a massive undertaking.

Also if you look at their investment in AI-driven code rewriting into Rust, my bet would be that some modern Windows code itself is being vibe-coded.

I agree the maintenance burden is probably being undervalued by developers in general, but there's just no way the work I do isn't faster. I just categorically couldn't have achieved the outputs I do now in the time windows I have. The software just wouldn't have existed in the world of 3 years ago and I did enough coding back then to say that with certainty.