That's a good attitude too. Maybe if you are employing a 'bad programmer' on your team you are just moving the complexity in their own brain/worldview into your

That's a good attitude too. Maybe if you are employing a 'bad programmer' on your team you are just moving the complexity in their own brain/worldview into your team/codebase hahaha! :) I agree with you that there's unavoidable complexity and there's a limit. Let's assume we can even get to that clarity, but it's achievable to get there - and once you get there you realize that we just have to dive in. There's no way around it. Even so I'm always looking for that simple-as-possible, first-path-to-poc way to do it. Another thing you said is interesting too: the balance of complexity (almost aesthetic that arranging isn't it?). That's very clever and I that describes the 'dark side' of 'good designs' that are actually not useful, even tho they may appear elegant. This has produced a lot of really interesting answers. I feel condifent saying that programmers in general definitely work with, think about, and are intimately invovled with complexity. I think because we are (in a down to earth not grandiose way) at the coalface of programming reality, and reality is complex.