I’ve recently read and thought about The Brutalist Programming Manifesto. I love the directness: Keep it simple. Solve problems. Nobody is smarter. Do everything yourself. Strive for robustness. Security is an illusion. Use input devices sensibly. Avoid eye-candy. Don’t depend on tools. Be humble. Don’t work for free unless you like it. Don’t listen to others.
Some of it is unrealistic in a professional environment where you have to go along to get along sometimes. I would love to create the simplest problem solutions, written from the ground up but that doesn’t align with some corporate goals which entail more complexity and less direct problem solving because, for example, we need to be compatible with customer enterprise solutions.
Maybe that’s a cop out but money is a good thing and compromise is one of the prices to be paid to get it. But, for personal projects and interests, I’m in line with these ideas. It’s all about solving problems as simply as possible and creating something that has never existed before. There is a prosaic beauty in that.
These principles apply to many things, not just programming. As a cyclist, there are all these new technologies that “improve” things, but really, all you need is a comfortable bike that is suited to the terrain you plan to ride and not much else.
We only have so much time on this planet. Why make it more complex than it needs to be?