A well-architected application (they do exist) where a lot of work was put into designing the arrows and boxes will suffer from this effect less so than one where the arrows and boxes were added on haphazardly. In fact, I would argue that spending too much time worrying about the arrows is a sign that something's likely wrong with your architecture.
Of course, that's not to say that architecture can cure this altogether. In particular, enterprise software tends to focus on integration a lot, and mostly because enterprises have a lot of boxes that need to be put together.
Startups will tend to do a lot less of this, but it's still important.
A well-architected application (they do exist) where a lot of work was put into designing the arrows and boxes will suffer from this effect less so than one where the arrows and boxes were added on haphazardly. In fact, I would argue that spending too much time worrying about the arrows is a sign that something's likely wrong with your architecture.
Of course, that's not to say that architecture can cure this altogether. In particular, enterprise software tends to focus on integration a lot, and mostly because enterprises have a lot of boxes that need to be put together.
Startups will tend to do a lot less of this, but it's still important.