[jameskilton]

I get what the author is trying to say but there's a fundamental difference between "complexity" and "complicated".

Life is complex (and often quite complicated). Most actual solutions that people need are solving complex problems. You can't really solve complex problems with simple software, you'll just end up building a complex (and often complicated) web of simple solutions.

Our job as software engineers is to prevent the software from getting complicated, managing the complexity such that it's able to morph as the users needs change over time.

To fit the article, adding a grill to a car would be complicating the car, not making it more complex.

[dijksterhuis]

> Most actual solutions that people need are solving complex problems.

My general experience has been the problems people want me to solve are not the actual problems that they need to solve.

The problems that need to be solved have very simple solutions.

The purported solutions to the purported problems are usually a way to avoid doing the simple solutions because it is "inconvenient" to people who want the other solution.

Maybe I'm jaded. Maybe I've had a bad lot. But it's happened enough, and in enough disparate instances, for me to think this is just humanity being humanity.

edit to add a caveat -- this applies generally, i.e. to most people most of the time. i feel like i cast a bit of a wide net with how this comment has been phrased.

[namaria]

I'm of the opinion that nothing is ever simple. We live in a fascinatingly complex universe, and the closer you look the more information you can see packed inside everything.

Simple is just a name we attach to domains of well understood, well managed complexity.

[j45]

Fair points.

Instead of the simple-complex spectrum, I think about the big problems are usually made up of smaller problem spectrum.