Simple beats smart. Always.

If your design looks impressive, you are probably doing it wrong.
Real engineering is brutal, simple, and durable.
I learned that the hard way. Early in my career, I thought adding complexity made me look clever. What it actually did was make everything I touched fragile and hard to maintain.

Why Engineers Fall into the Complexity Trap

• Ego: We want to show off our skills.

• Fear: We are afraid a simple solution looks lazy.

• Inexperience: We do not understand yet how expensive complexity is.

When you are new, complexity feels like armor. You pile on features and clever tricks thinking it makes your project bulletproof.
It does the opposite.

Real-World Pain

You have seen it too.

• A web app that needs three server calls just to load a login page.

• A bridge built with three times the material, draining the budget.

• A control system that collapses because one unnecessary sensor failed.

I have built that kind of disaster myself. And I have stayed up at 2 a.m. patching it, wishing I had kept it simple.

Every extra layer you add becomes a point of failure.
Every clever shortcut becomes a future headache.
Scaling up turns into dragging a dead horse uphill.

How to Build Smarter, Not Heavier

• Start with first principles. What absolutely must happen? What does not?

• Focus on failure modes first, not features.

• Design for users, not for awards.

• Ask for brutal feedback. Find someone who will tear your design apart and show you what you can remove.

What Experience Teaches You

The designs I am most proud of are the ones that seem almost obvious once you see them.
Simple is not amateur.
Simple is genius disguised as common sense.

If you are not a little embarrassed by how basic your final solution looks, you are not done yet.