Every developer starts with simple intentions: “I’ll just add one feature.” But systems grow like weeds. Before long, you’re staring at a jungle of abstractions, dependencies, and edge cases — each added with good intentions.
Complexity is sneaky. It doesn’t arrive all at once; it accumulates in silence. One temporary hack becomes two. A quick fix becomes a pattern. And suddenly, no one knows how the system really works.
The real cost of complexity isn’t technical — it’s human. It drains mental energy. It slows onboarding. It makes debugging an emotional event. Simplicity, by contrast, is brutally hard. It takes courage to delete code, to say “no” to features, to resist the illusion of progress that comes with adding more.
Every line you write is a debt you’ll pay someday. The best developers aren’t the ones who write the most code — they’re the ones who remove the most without breaking anything.
Complexity kills speed. Simplicity scales. Choose accordingly.
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