The Grug Brained Developer (2022)

While I agree that complexity is bad the fact that we don't really have a shared understanding of what complexity is doesn't help. At worst, it can be just another synonym for "bad" that passes through the mental firewall without detection. For instance is having multiple files in a project "complex"? If I am unfamiliar with a codebase is it "complex" and I therefore have to re-write it?

I think you hit the nail on the head. This article is definitely biased against modern front-end development for example and recommends HTMX as less "complex", but from what I've seen, using HTMX just trades one form of complexity for another.

This part:

> back end better more boring because all bad ideas have tried at this point maybe (still retry some!)

I entered a Spring Boot codebase recently, and it was anything but boring or "simple" -- everything is wrapped by convention in classes/abstract classes/extending layers deep of interfaces, static classes for single methods. Classic OO design that I thankfully moved away from after college.

I think the author makes good points, but I don't think the author is any different than your average developer who accuses the thing they are not familiar with to be "complex".