Keep It Simple, Stupid
While I was writing my series on building a PHP framework, I kept coming back to one coding principle: preventing unnecessary complexity.
There are a lot of similar and related principles out there, but they all boil down to the same idea: keep things as simple as possible. And they are all correct.
It's pretty simple, usually, to find these mistakes in an existing codebase. In this post I want to take it a step further and explore when you do need to add complexity, and when you should avoid it.
The beast of many names
The basic principle is very simple. But it is a hard concept to completely grasp. I believe that to be why there are so many different names and variations on the topic:
- KISS: Keep It Simple, Stupid
- YAGNI: You Ain't Gonna Need It
- Premature optimization is the root of all evil
All true, but also, not very helpful on their own. These principles are very general and miss nuance. Let's dive into some examples of unnecessary complexity.