I think tools are great. I don't get into it in the article, but with both tools and humans you can in fact makes sense of complicated structures even if there are dozens of attributes per object, but the thing is it's hard, and that work is throw-away.
If you spend three weeks studying a complex piece of code until it makes sense to you, unless you modify the code with your newfound understanding, the next person has to climb up that same ladder.
So even if the tools are great, I think in maybe cases it's go to push that understanding back into the artifact, so the artifact improves. A counter-example might be legacy software where it's just too risky to make anythings. Then maybe you just push your understanding into really good documentation, or a 2nd parallel implementation.
If you spend three weeks studying a complex piece of code until it makes sense to you, unless you modify the code with your newfound understanding, the next person has to climb up that same ladder.
So even if the tools are great, I think in maybe cases it's go to push that understanding back into the artifact, so the artifact improves. A counter-example might be legacy software where it's just too risky to make anythings. Then maybe you just push your understanding into really good documentation, or a 2nd parallel implementation.