A really big issue in simplicity and modesty. Engineers are supposed to simplify via their expertise and produce something is consistent, elegant and easy to u

A really big issue in simplicity and modesty. Engineers are supposed to simplify via their expertise and produce something is consistent, elegant and easy to use and maybe even beautiful. That's the achievement, taking something clearly complex and 'taming' it. There is a ugly trend towards gratuitous complexity. Some seem to revel in it. Is it because of signalling, lack of expertise or hidden fears about becoming redundant and making work? At least one of the folks mentioned here is responsible for producing by far the most user hostile pieces of software I have ever come upon. Discourse seems to not only revel in complexity but celebrate it. The objective does not seem to simplify in any way but make everything as complex and convuluted as possible. The only way to use it is via Docker so you need to know Docker which is itself not a friend of the simplicity line of thought. Then it needs a full dev environment with around 80 packages, 2 databases, around 150 gems most of which need to be compiled and can fail at any time with mysterious messages and while at building possibly the most important software in human history why not just throw in nodejs too. At the end of which I am sure many would have forgotten why they started this exercise in the first place.