Do the simplest thing that could possibly work

Anyone proclaiming simplicity just hasnt worked at scale. Even rewrites that have a decade old code base to be inspired from, often fail due to the sheer amount of things to consider.

A classic, Chesterton's Fence:

"There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.”"

We can even just look at the title here: Do the simplest thing POSSIBLE.

You can't escape complexity when a problem is complex. You could certainly still complicate it even more than necessary, though. Nowhere in this article is it saying you can avoid complexity altogether, but that many of us tend to over-complicate problems for no good reason.

I think the nuance here is that “the simplest thing possible” is not always the “best solution”. As an example, it is possible to solve very many business or operational problems with a simple service sitting in front of a database. At scale, you can continue to operate, but the amount of man-hours going into keeping the lights on can grow exponentially. Is the simplest thing possible still the DB?

Complexity is more than just the code or the infrastructure; it needs to run the entire gamut of the solution. That includes looking at the incidental complexity that goes into scaling, operating, maintaining, and migrating (if a temporary ‘too simple but fast to get going’ stack was chosen).

Measure twice, cut once. Understand what you are trying to build, and work out a way to get there in stages that provide business value at each step. Easier said than done.

Edit: Replies seem to be getting hung up over the “DB” reference. This is meant to be a hypothetical where the reader infers a scenario of a technology that “can solve all problems, but is not necessarily the best solution”. Substitute for “writing files to the file system” if you prefer.

Do you handle one "everything is perfect" happy path, and use a manual exception process for odd things?

Do you handle "most" cases, which is more tech work but shrinks the number of people you need handling one-off things?

Or do you try to computerize everything no matter how rare?