I especially like your point about planning for simplicity and making it an explicit design coal. Communicating this clearly to the team seems super important.
As for adding things out of intellectual gratification: This is so true. I've seen this all too often, myself included. Many good engineers are curious by nature, and it can be tough to restrict this curiosity. Maybe it's a question of having different outlets for that sort of creativity, either at work or in private.
If your list is available in some form, I'd be curious to have a look!
Absolutely! For me, comprehensive testing is key to keep things clean over time. Not sure why this didn't come to my mind when writing the article. I think I was somehow assuming that this is a necessary pre-condition anyway.
I share the main point of the author that some software systems are inherently complex due to the problem domain they are dealing with.
However, I think he's missing the point that simplicity has its value for complex systems as well, namely by striving for simplicity in the building blocks of the complex system.
Thanks for the suggestion, definitely something to think about. However, this is also non-trivial to implement in a robust and efficient manner, so not sure we'll look at this soon.
I especially like your point about planning for simplicity and making it an explicit design coal. Communicating this clearly to the team seems super important.
As for adding things out of intellectual gratification: This is so true. I've seen this all too often, myself included. Many good engineers are curious by nature, and it can be tough to restrict this curiosity. Maybe it's a question of having different outlets for that sort of creativity, either at work or in private.
If your list is available in some form, I'd be curious to have a look!