In a former life I often bemoaned the amount of boilerplate shovel code I was having to write to move data between my underlying data models and the user interf

In a former life I often bemoaned the amount of boilerplate shovel code I was having to write to move data between my underlying data models and the user interface's displaying them. So much repetitive and simple 'pick up this number, format it to two decimals, put it in this display box'. Then technologies came out featuring data binding, and patterns like MVVM to keep me from having to write all that shovel code. Instead I could just specify bindings directly in the declarative UI layer, bind it to my data object (or view object) and be done. All I had to do was learn the binding language, understand how the binding engine worked, understand the corner cases and details like the difference between one and two-way binding, etc. Eventually the code taught me that typing, proofing and and maintaining shovel code is often easier than understanding and maintaining the magic incantations of a more 'elegant' solution. My eyes can quickly scan over boilerplate and glean what it is doing pretty quickly. But magic - magic takes understanding - and I only have so many ready spell slots.