Comment by zubairq
Brilliant article. I read a brilliant book written by Jessica Livingston (Paul Graham's wife) called Founders at Work. In the book Steve Wozniak talked about how he got designs done fast by keeping it all in his head. Ever since I read that I have tried to do the same. I would recommend this to anyone working on their own project.
Of course in a corporate setting it is much harder to do as you have code written in multiple languages using multiple patterns stored in different places, so often there is not underlying architectural thread to hold it all together.
One of the things I liked about programming the Apple II was that I could also hold the whole machine in my head. It's quite a contrast to wondering which of the 4,000 methods on a Java textbox I need.