I feel like we discuss this to death, and it's rarely satisfying or enlightening because it circles around these concepts we don't actually interrogate. People

I feel like we discuss this to death, and it's rarely satisfying or enlightening because it circles around these concepts we don't actually interrogate. People love to mention the distinction between essential complexity and incidental complexity, but how do you distinguish between them rigorously? What even is "complexity"? The ambiguity allows "complexity" to become a shorthand for "what I don't like or consider inelegant". And it often builds up to just another argument about why Node sucks, or whatever.