> We need to stop admiring those smart enough to understand how the software works, and start making the software easier to understand in the first place.
Yes, I agree. But I think it does take a lot of design skill to achieve the latter. Making the complicated simple is not an easy task. Hoare described a similar problem like this[0]:
> There are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies.
> The first method is far more difficult. It demands the same skill, devotion, insight, and even inspiration as the discovery of the simple physical laws which underlie the complex phenomena of nature.
Yes, I agree. But I think it does take a lot of design skill to achieve the latter. Making the complicated simple is not an easy task. Hoare described a similar problem like this[0]:
> There are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies.
> The first method is far more difficult. It demands the same skill, devotion, insight, and even inspiration as the discovery of the simple physical laws which underlie the complex phenomena of nature.
[0] The Emperor's Old Clothes (1980) - https://web.archive.org/web/20220428130737/https://www.cs.fs...