In my undergraduate engineering design course, we were taught to “KISS and MISS”, which stands for “Keep It Super Simple” and “Make It Super Simple”. (Or if you prefer, “Keep It Simple, Stupid”) I find this to be true in my work. Too often, I get sucked into building complex, flashy code at the expense of achieving the basics within a smaller timeframe. I think to myself: “wouldn’t it be nice to have an AJAX popup and a yellow-fade technique right there when the user clicks the button?” And I get excited about using my newly-learned Backbone.js knowledge… Oh, it goes on from there!
Two weeks later, I still haven’t pushed out that “easy” feature I promised I’d get done “in a few days.”
So I’m learning, again, how to keep things simple. It helps to know that software is always evolving and there are many opportunities to go back and refine code. Software development is a process and you gotta grow hair before thinking about your hair-dos. It also helps to know that humans are amazingly versatile and capable of tolerating inconveniences (even solving them in creative ways). There’s less pressure to deliver “perfect” software because crashes are “okay.”
It’s all part and parcel of this journey called development.

