> The common theme was seeing complexity and, especially, abstraction as a universal good rather than something with real costs Rich Hickey did a great service

> The common theme was seeing complexity and, especially, abstraction as a universal good rather than something with real costs Rich Hickey did a great service outlining some common problems when thinking about the word complexity itself: http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Simple-Made-Easy http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Simple-Made-Easy I don't think it's about the engineers wanting to see complexity, so much as the problems you mention stemming from design-by-committee.