The Software-Entropy Paradox

In physics, entropy describes the inevitable tendency of systems toward disorder unless external energy is applied.
What’s less obviously recognized is that software systems. despite being purely informational. are just as subject to entropy as physical systems, though the mechanisms are different.

In software, entropy manifests not through physical decay, but through environmental drift, accumulation of incidental complexity, and gradual erosion of system coherence. A codebase that remains untouched is not preserved in any meaningful sense; it silently becomes obsolete. Libraries it depends on receive breaking changes, security vulnerabilities emerge, operating systems deprecate features it once relied on, and new requirements shift the assumptions that initially made the software design "correct."
Technical debt compounds this decay. Temporary workarounds ossify into permanent structures. Layers of patches accumulate without holistic rethinking. Even small divergences between intent and implementation grow into fundamental misalignments over time. Without deliberate, continuous intervention. in the form of refactoring, modernization, and architectural reevaluation. the internal order of a system degrades. In severe cases, the cost of change becomes so high that systems are effectively abandoned, not because they “fail” all at once, but because they become too fragile and convoluted to safely evolve.

There is a dangerous illusion among engineers that "stable" software. i.e., software that is not actively changing. is inherently low-risk. In reality, stagnation itself is a risk vector. The inability to adapt, to respond to changing external conditions, becomes fatal. A system that is merely stable today without active stewardship is on an irreversible path toward failure tomorrow.

Thus, software engineering is not a process of construction alone; it is a process of ongoing thermodynamic resistance. Every line of code, every dependency, every architectural choice incurs an invisible maintenance cost simply by existing in a dynamic, ever-evolving environment. To engineer software sustainably is to accept that entropy is not an occasional threat. it is a constant force, always present, requiring continuous work simply to maintain the current level of system integrity.

Ignoring entropy does not stop it. It only delays the realization of its full cost.