Simplicity

I’m a simple man. I love simplicity.

And I hate when things get so complicated it hurts my mind.

Building Web Applications doesn’t need to be complicated, in most cases.

Unless you’re creating something really complicated by design.

Otherwise, introducing complexity is entirely your choice.

But developers like complexity. Introducing complexity even when it’s not needed. Maybe not needed yet, maybe to prepare an app for a future that will never exist.

Sometimes decisions are taken unconsciously, for fear of looking dumb.

I heard this said in a video by Carson Gross, the developer of htmx:

“In web development, a lot of decisions are driven by the fear of looking dumb. People are worried about appearing unsophisticated and unwilling to say this is “too complicated and we should do something simpler even though it’s not super sexy“”

Peer pressure is the ultimate evil. New developers are especially prone to thinking “seniors” will make fun of them for picking some tech stack that doesn’t look complex:

How many times I’ve heard “this tech stack will scale” for an app that ended up never seeing the light of the day because you abandoned it after working on it for 3 months and then you lost the initial enthusiasm?

Or, building a SaaS on top of an overly complicated stack only to be stuck with 2 paying customers at $4.99/m?

If only the app stack complexity was directly correlated with the number of customers we’d get, we’d all be millionaires. But instead, it has nothing to do with it.

People use our app because they need it. If you happen to build something people need, and you are able to find customers in a way that’s sustainable, you’ll have success.

This has nothing to do with the app complexity.

Actually, it’s the opposite.

Building an app with simple technology lets you ship faster.

Shipping faster means you can get the app faster to market, test more ideas, see what works and what doesn’t.

And if something gets traction, you can work on it more. Add more complexity if you need it, to do more, or to do some specific things in a better way.