https://matthewrocklin.com/blog//work/2018/01/27/write-dumb-code
goes along with our ancient 'creeping elegance' threads.
QuoteWe should use advanced techniques only when we are not smart enough to figure out how to use more common techniques
That one jumped off the page at me!
"Everything should be made as simply as possible, but not simpler." -- somebody before me
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/05/13/einstein-simple/
A corollary to this is the Joel Spolsky classic 2000 essay on how starting over on software is a common response to troubled software, but almost always the wrong response.
QuoteNetscape 6.0 is finally going into its first public beta. There never was a version 5.0. The last major release, version 4.0, was released almost three years ago. Three years is an awfully long time in the Internet world. During this time, Netscape sat by, helplessly, as their market share plummeted.
It's a bit smarmy of me to criticize them for waiting so long between releases. They didn't do it on purpose, now, did they?
Well, yes. They did. They did it by making the single worst strategic mistake that any software company can make:
They decided to rewrite the code from scratch.
https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-never-do-part-i/
And the awesome punchline, which is more a propos here (emphasis Spolsky's):
QuoteThere's a subtle reason that programmers always want to throw away the code and start over. The reason is that they think the old code is a mess. And here is the interesting observation: they are probably wrong. The reason that they think the old code is a mess is because of a cardinal, fundamental law of programming:
It's harder to read code than to write it.