Maybe I read too much into your original comment, but it reminded me of a pitfall that I see too many engineering types fall into, namely that because something

Maybe I read too much into your original comment, but it reminded me of a pitfall that I see too many engineering types fall into, namely that because something can't be formalized then it must be arbitrary, unimportant, or both. In particular, this seems like a counterproductive way to frame the issue: > If I have no objective criteria, then it must be subjective, and then all that "simple" means is that "this is easiest for me right now" Here's a few other (actionble) things that "simple" can mean. * seems to reliably be easiest for me every time I look at it * was judged to be better by the three or four people I could get to give me an opinion * follows a heuristic that a bunch of smart people all seem to agree generally makes things better * mirrors whatever we did on this project the last time we were in this situation Even if all it means is "easiest for me right now", that's still probably going to get better results than "the first thing that popped into my head that might work". There is no objective definition of simple. On behalf of the maintenance programmers of the world, please don't take that to mean it's not worth trying anyway.