The question of complexity

A few months ago I finished reading "A Philosophy of Software Design" by John Ousterhout. Almost every chapter felt like a memory of something I had already learned, shaped this time into language. But one line refused to settle:

“Complexity cannot be formalized.”

At first it seemed obvious. Software grows through people and decisions; its tangle feels too human to describe with precision. Still, the idea kept returning. If physics can describe turbulence, curvature, and entropy, then perhaps information has its own geometry waiting to be found.

That thought began to follow me. It drew a faint line between code and physics, between structure and energy. The line curved, and somewhere along it appeared a familiar shape — the sphere.

From Energy to Information #

In the physical world, the sphere marks the point where forces come to rest. A drop of water, a planet, a cell — each forms a smooth enclosure when attraction and resistance reach balance. Energy hides inside, and the surface becomes the limit beyond which tension cannot hold.

The same pattern may appear in systems of information. A well-designed module or interface feels closed and complete, as if the ideas inside have found their boundary. Perhaps clarity in software is the result of the same law that guides matter:

the tendency of complexity to settle into the smallest surface that can still contain it.