Tight Coupling, Loose Reality

Systems don’t break because they’re complex—they break because everything depends on everything else in ways no one intended.

Coupling as the real villain

• why complexity alone isn’t failure

Implicit dependencies

• hidden contracts, side effects

When coupling becomes cultural

• knowledge silos, team bottlenecks

Decoupling as survival strategy

• queues, APIs, domain boundaries

Measuring “coupling pain”

• practical heuristics