> In my experience, it's always the junior who shouts "This could all be so much simpler!"
Don't have time now to find links of Jonathan Blow, George Hotz, Casey Muratori, and many other decidedly non-junior programmers complaining about the absurd, unnecessary complexity of modern software development.
The people who complain are the people who know how much simpler it can be.
Now, there is a separate phenomenon of green devs who think they can rebuild X only because they can't fathom the bulk beneath the iceberg's tip. That is real too. But it takes nothing away from the very real fact that the vast majority of software written today is much, much more complex than it needs to be.
I just listened to George speak to Lex. He talked about the engineering time they spend in tinygrad to make it simpler. A lot of hours goes in to refactoring to make it as simple as it is. Writing simple software for complex problems takes a lot of work.
The path of least resistance at every step is definitely more complexity, so that’s what happens. Fighting complexity has to be actively prioritized.
Try to discuss this with people and it’s endless hand waving about resume driven development or not enough time or devs aren’t good enough or nobody really writes good software.
Don't have time now to find links of Jonathan Blow, George Hotz, Casey Muratori, and many other decidedly non-junior programmers complaining about the absurd, unnecessary complexity of modern software development.
The people who complain are the people who know how much simpler it can be.
Now, there is a separate phenomenon of green devs who think they can rebuild X only because they can't fathom the bulk beneath the iceberg's tip. That is real too. But it takes nothing away from the very real fact that the vast majority of software written today is much, much more complex than it needs to be.