“Here’s something simple I came up with. It may not look like much, but trust me, it was really hard to realize this was all I needed to do.”
This reminds me of something Scott Shenker, my computer networking professor at Berkeley, drilled into us every chance he got: Don't manage complexity. Extract simplicity.
Finding complex solutions to complex problems is comparatively easy. Finding simple solutions to complex problems is hard.
I can't second this enough. This is why it's so important to throw away your prototype code, sometimes, instead of trying to fix it. It's also the big value-add of TDD: Well written tests make that extracted simplicity explicit.
This reminds me of something Scott Shenker, my computer networking professor at Berkeley, drilled into us every chance he got: Don't manage complexity. Extract simplicity.
Finding complex solutions to complex problems is comparatively easy. Finding simple solutions to complex problems is hard.