Keep It Simple, Silly
The KISS principle is the idea that you should try to keep things as simple as possible, but not simpler. Adopting this mentality helps us as engineers because there will always be unknown unknowns when designing and building software - things you weren’t able to think about up-front that might have a complexity cost attached. Therefore, if you’re already dealing with an overly complicated solution, the unknown unknowns will hurt you (i.e. increase technical debt) more than they should.
How do you Keep It Simple?
- Favour open source solutions to problems, rather than rolling your own. Some lightweight examples: Restito, Wiremock, Apache Commons utils, Guava libraries.
- Get a second opinion. If something feels like it’s getting overly complex, take the time to talk it through with a peer. Quite often their fresh perspective will help you arrive at a neater solution.
- Favour XP practices.