Technical debt aside of course the development process looks like that - what's the alternative? Infinite feature growth? No one benefits from that.

As an example, I've got signal on my phone- it started with texting features, added images, calls, video calling, but at some point there's a limit on the number of useful ways to communicate.

I don't need it to be another social network.

I don't need it to tell me my horoscope, order a pizza, or organize my photos.

I don't need it to track my health, play games, read my work emails, or drive my car.

It doesn't need to integrate with VR, or AI, or whatever 2-letter buzz acronym comes up next week.

It's a secure messaging platform, I need it to send messages. Sure, there's always a cat and mouse game of encryption to keep ahead of, but infinite feature growth? It's not practical or necessary. Things can exist to do one thing reliably and well.

Maybe I'm not looking deep enough into the question, but wouldn't this be because we do the easy parts first?

More code = more things that must be maintained = more things that can break. It’s natural that development slows down over time. Doesn’t necessarily mean there’s technical debt.

Complexity is inherent an unavoidable.

Because each feature is a cost.