From the blog he linked to: "I’m going to try designing something way more ambitious."
This is how you end up with unnecessary complexity [1]. The best engineers don't aim for "designing something ambitious", instead they come up with the simplest possible design. They take something that seems complex and make it simple.
Unfortunately that's not how engineers are evaluated [2].
"I am going to solve a complex problem" is a better goal. If you start with the goal of designing something ambitious then the design will likely end up more complex than necessary.
flowerlad · · focus · HN ↗
This is how you end up with unnecessary complexity [1]. The best engineers don't aim for "designing something ambitious", instead they come up with the simplest possible design. They take something that seems complex and make it simple.
Unfortunately that's not how engineers are evaluated [2].
[1] <a href="https://goomics.net/316" rel="nofollow">https://goomics.net/316
[2] <a href="https://terriblesoftware.org/2026/03/03/nobody-gets-promoted-for-simplicity/" rel="nofollow">https://terriblesoftware.org/2026/03/03/nobody-gets-promoted...
themgt · · focus · HN ↗
These are orthogonal.
A lot of the dissonance on HN appears to come from two groups of people talking past each other:
a) developers working at some corporation they hate vs.
b) developers working for themselves or somewhere they don't hate
flowerlad · · focus · HN ↗
argee · · focus · HN ↗
As an example, heliocentrism was profoundly ambitious yet devastatingly simple compared to geocentric formulae.