[rkagerer]

Largely agree, but I've found distilling complex requirements down to a simple implementation takes effort, and sometimes longer than the more circuitous route.

A coarse rule of thumb from a few decades of my own experience in software development is that version 1 will be quick, dirty and (in retrospect) naive. Version 2 will improve it with what you learned the first time around. And version 3 tends to be the clean, solid, polished winner. I've learned to expect and encourage refactoring to arrive at this point.