The purpose of the more complicated solutions is to build something that will be maintained for a long time where complexity will grow, and usually, require multiple contributors.
I can bang out a basic landing page site in a few hours that will be extremely performant while pulling in zero libraries. But I would never want to maintain that over any extended period of time or added complexity.
The purpose of more complicated solutions is to prevent devs from becoming bored and leaving.
In my experience, KISS results in the easiest solution to maintain. Then I get a litany of complaints from devs that "this isn't programming" or "this is a dead end to my career" and then they leave. Which paradoxically makes it more difficult to maintain, as I have no maintainers lol.
What are you working on? Without knowing your use-case or what your codebase looks like, I have no idea if the problem is with other devs, or you are just blind to the insanity that is your codebase.
Not saying that latter is the case here, but I've ran into devs maintaining some monstrosity and then complaining about others pushing for off-the-shelf solutions not realizing that nobody wants to spend time learning some bespoke system they created that's not actually as great as they think it is.
You just need to hire older people. I’ve been doing web development for nearly 25 years. I’m at the point where I would love to just babysit some sites while spending more time on my hobbies and more time with my family.
Another poster beat me to it: hire older devs! I'm 42 and my ideal work is maintaining several systems that move rather slowly. It's chill, still responsible, and allows for creativity and inventive solutions when the need calls for it.
Not going to bash younger devs in general but the fact is that getting the job done without thinking of their future career... is usually not high in their list of priorities.
Yep, my personal webpage probably has like a 10/10 score on any performance tracking thing you could find. Because I literally just wrote some html and css, and dropped it into github pages.
I mean, if it really took you a few hours, maybe you actually could throw it away and start again later? Meanwhile, if you have to keep rewriting your setup anyway to account for the new shiny toy everyone insists you use every year, have you really made something that requires less effort to maintain?
I can bang out a basic landing page site in a few hours that will be extremely performant while pulling in zero libraries. But I would never want to maintain that over any extended period of time or added complexity.