The power of simplicity: When I worked at Searchmetrics a few years ago, I often had to review pull requests from my frontend tech lead Martin Götte and every time I was kind of shocked by how simple they were.

I was shocked because the code he wrote was actually so simple it almost felt stupid. How could my tech lead write such code? It was always a few lines of code here and there that did exactly what it was supposed to do or change, no more, no less.

It actually took me a few years to really understand and appreciate it. The very fact that the code was extremely simple and trivial to understand was actually the genius of it, and that does not come for free. It takes a lot of work and thought to transform complex problems into short and simple solutions.

Why is it so important? Simple solutions usually require less code which means fewer surface areas for bugs to occur, typically have a lower runtime complexity, and most importantly, are easier to update and for the next person or your future self to understand.

This is not only true for writing software though, Mark Twain said, “I apologize for such a long letter - I didn’t have time to write a short one.”

The next time you’re about to submit a pull request or review what looks like a complicated change, ask yourself if you can spend some time making it simpler.