> Paradoxically, good design is self-effacing: bad design is often more impressive than good.
Rings very true. Engineers are rated based on the "complexity" of the work they do. This system seems to encourage over-engineered solutions to all problems.
I don't think there is enough appreciation for KISS - which I first learned about as an undergrad 20 years ago.
This is unfortunately true. People love complex solutions, and suggesting a simple one usually comes across as incompetent, while the reality is, simple solutions are easy to manage, which ensures the success of the project as a whole.
Sure, there are problems that are inherently complex and require complex solutions. But most likely yours isn't one of them, most likely you have a basic web app.
One of the smartest engineers I've encountered in my 27 year career advised me to strive to do "the simplest thing that could possibly work" - not just to get unblocked on something new, but as a guiding principle. It resonated (and goes beyond "KISS", for me), and IME is real wisdom.
That’s a slogan from Extreme Programming! Coined by Ron Jeffries, I think, along with YAGNI (You Aren’t Gonna Need It), as a way of reminding people not to overengineer for features that in the plan.
Every now and then, I try to go through our codebase and write up the parts that we rarely think about – these are usually the cases where we made good decisions early on.
Rings very true. Engineers are rated based on the "complexity" of the work they do. This system seems to encourage over-engineered solutions to all problems.
I don't think there is enough appreciation for KISS - which I first learned about as an undergrad 20 years ago.