The obvious response to a slipping deadline is more people. Output falls first, because the only people who can train them are the ones already behind — and coordination grows with the square of the team.
Every complex system that works turns out to have grown from a simple one that worked. Designing the finished version from scratch doesn't just take longer — it has a startlingly poor success rate.
A factory running at 98% capacity can still fail to deliver. Optimising everything except the bottleneck is not progress — it is an expensive illusion.
Cunningham's metaphor was never about bad code. It was about a rational trade — ship now, pay interest later — and the interest is levied on every future change you make.