I feel like the definition of "stupid" here is important. There are a lot of incredibly clever programmers out there who will construct intricate webs of abstr

I feel like the definition of "stupid" here is important. There are a lot of incredibly clever programmers out there who will construct intricate webs of abstracted hell because they are clever. These guys are mostly not "stupid". One of my colleagues working on one of these code bases with me described it as "very smart people doing very stupid things". And yes, they all have long and annoying careers. Contrast this with the swathes of what I would characterise as "rat cunning" programmers who were everywhere during the Y2K crisis. They knew just enough to be dangerous, did some truly stupid things and disappeared from the programming world afterwards. The unkind might say they all turned into systems architects and project managers.