I read this as Kay being unfamiliar enough with the lower level protocols to assume they're significantly cleaner than the higher level web. The “designed by professionals” era he's talking about still had major problems with security (spoofing is still too easy), reliability and performance which is why there's still new work being done tuning everything for high speed or high packet loss links. Go back just a little further and hostnames were resolved by searching a text file which people had to distribute!
Both systems are complex heterogenous systems and have significant backwards compatibility challenges any time you want to fix a wart. It's easy to spot problems, hard to fix them, and as the array of failed competitors to eithet shows it's surprisingly hard to design something equivalent without going through the same learning curve.
As a biologist might tell an intelligent design proponent, if you look at one and see genius design you're not looking closely enough.
Interestingly enough, Alan Kay, who has an undergaraduate degree in the subject, was inspired by biology (particularly the way that field discovers and organizes knowledge) when he designed Smalltalk.
Both systems are complex heterogenous systems and have significant backwards compatibility challenges any time you want to fix a wart. It's easy to spot problems, hard to fix them, and as the array of failed competitors to eithet shows it's surprisingly hard to design something equivalent without going through the same learning curve.
As a biologist might tell an intelligent design proponent, if you look at one and see genius design you're not looking closely enough.