Under-engineer

Related to yesterday’s article on HTML first, I really enjoyed this tweet from my friend Sara Soueidan on under-engineering…

Under-engineer. That’s almost always better for usability and accessibility. Simple solutions are almost always more robust.

Every complex thing I’ve ever built, I’ve later gone on to refactor into something simpler. Same thing with team code.

Simpler, less clever solutions are nearly always better in almost every way. They’re easier to implement. They’re easier to maintain. They’re less likely to break. They’re less confusing to users, because they’re expected rather than novel.

Under-engineering as a noble goal for a web developer.