Many systems suffer from similar fate (think Emacs)
That happens so much in software there needs to be a word for it, a term of its own.
After a while, you get deep enough in the rabbit hole so that it seems your initial judgement of redundant complexity was wrong. Even though it's still true, you've adapted to it. You just can't see it from the viewpoint of someone new anymore. For this reason I tend to carefully write down my initial concerns with something.
More on-topic, I don't think what TeX needs is a complete, sudden break with the past. It would be better to deprecate old, flawed features, and later on disable them and provide and optional compatibility mode (which is a bigger download).
That happens so much in software there needs to be a word for it, a term of its own.
After a while, you get deep enough in the rabbit hole so that it seems your initial judgement of redundant complexity was wrong. Even though it's still true, you've adapted to it. You just can't see it from the viewpoint of someone new anymore. For this reason I tend to carefully write down my initial concerns with something.
More on-topic, I don't think what TeX needs is a complete, sudden break with the past. It would be better to deprecate old, flawed features, and later on disable them and provide and optional compatibility mode (which is a bigger download).