What he doesn't emphasize is the directionality of this phase transition. It's really easy to add one more string, but staring at the resulting button-thread agglomeration it's very difficult to know what string to cut. This is why there is a never ending stream of new projects started to solve the same problems over and over. Their authors covet the opportunity to make progress during the honeymoon period, before the Sisyphean battle against software entropy sets in.