KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) is a principle that reminds us to avoid unnecessary complexity in our software designs. It's a mantra for those of us who have seen countless projects crumble under the weight of over-engineered, convoluted codebases that make even the most seasoned developers want to rage quit and become goat herders.

How to use it in a sentence

• "I know you're excited about using that new, shiny framework, but let's KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) and stick with what we know works for this project. We don't want to end up like the last startup that went bankrupt trying to rewrite everything in Haskell."

• "When the product manager asked me to add 15 new features to the app by next week, I had to remind them about the KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) principle. I mean, sure, I could probably hack it together, but good luck maintaining that spaghetti code when I'm sipping margaritas on a beach in Bali."

If you actually want to learn more...

• The Hidden Costs That Engineers Ignore: This article dives into strategies for defending against the non-obvious deficiencies that arise from complexity, such as optimizing for simplicity and clearly defining interfaces between modules and services.

• DIP in the Wild: Martin Fowler explores the Dependency Inversion Principle (DIP) and how it relates to the KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) principle, emphasizing the importance of breaking problems into logical blocks and extending them to accommodate additional scenarios as the system grows.

• Revenge of the Nerds: Paul Graham argues that most managers deliberately ignore the fact that programming languages vary in power, and that using the most powerful language you can get, while keeping things simple, is a recipe for making money in the software business.

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