Most code does not last long. I have found that someone that is adding complexity is usually showing off, board, does not understand the requirement, is missin

Most code does not last long. I have found that someone that is adding complexity is usually showing off, board, does not understand the requirement, is missing something. I usually curb my own natural tendency to do this by saying 'what is the bare min to do this one thing'. Then write what would need to be done in the comments if we wanted it to do those other 'cool 5 things'. Also if you are using scrum or kanban it is a good place to add a story to say 'lets do those 5 things'. Then see if it ever gets any traction. You can write amazing cool code. But most of the time 3 people will ever us it and they will only use it for that one thing they wanted in the first place. I have been writing code for 25+ years now. My exp is similar to yours. Very little code survives. One proj I worked on if you still wanted to write on it you would need to know watcom SQL (sybase), MFC 4.0, win98s version of win32, and the quirks of those 3 systems. NO one is going to want to work on that sort of project unless there are many zeros on the per hour cost. That was not a small project either with well over 500 modules and hundreds of screens. I have watched project after project either killed or re-written. Code in most cases does not last that long. Of course there are some exceptions. But that is rare, the common path is most code does not last long.