Boxes and Glue

Steve Vionsky gives a great metaphor in Serendipitous Reuse

The layers of complexity required to maintain the resulting leaky illusion of local/remote transparency are reminiscent of the convoluted equations that pre-Copernican astronomers used to explain how the Sun and other planets revolved around the Earth.

There is a certain trend in every one of us to keep the familiar framework by making it more and more complex over time, I guess the same feature in our thinking process that leads to the paradigm shifts in science every so and so is the one that makes people avoid simplifying and stick with patches upon patches.