He’s sitting at a system that thousands of people built together simultaneously. We have gripes with our OSes but they’re all capable of nearly perfect uptime (depending on the hardware and workload.) So I am not convinced individuals need to own modules. I think it’s good for things to work that way, but not necessary.

I didn’t find much fault at all with what he’s saying about SDL. It’s just an example of the “layered design” he’s advocating for. You may have drawn your conclusion a little early; he immediately follows up with his API for graphics, which is actually a very practical example. He’s really just saying people should consider writing their own APIs even if it’s implemented with a library, because you can select exactly how complex the API needs to be for your app’s requirements. This makes the task of replacing a dependency much simpler.

He’s actually trying to prevent relying on things you don’t need. YAGNI.

> YAGNI

“You Aren’t Gonna Need It”