And the tragedy is that authors of such code often (usually?) don't receive recognition for saving time and effort on others' part by following KISS principles.

And the tragedy is that authors of such code often (usually?) don't receive recognition for saving time and effort on others' part by following KISS principles. For whatever reason its apparently opaque to others. And so there are entire jobs or even teams in the tech industry whose purpose is to work with and/or maintain systems that have needless complexity.