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Let's normalize removing complexity

Juan Luis
Dec 16, 2025 · 1 min read

here are 2 ways of fixing this LEGO® bridge. Which one you prefer? And how does that translate to building software?

A LEGO® bridge, one side is shorter than the other. There's one missing piece on one side... or one extra piece in the other side.

You look at all this complexity, and think: "let's create more tooling, let's write more docs, let's add more examples, let's ship an MCP". I look at all this complexity, and think: "let's urgently simplify all this, for the love of Knuth". We are not the same. In the age of hyper-abundance (formerly encouraged by Zero Interest Rates™ and Cheap RAM, always subsidized by colonial extraction, the environment, and our future generations), the skill that I appreciate the most and the one that I find more difficult to find is just saying "no" to unnecessary complexity. This has a scientific name: "addition bias". *People systematically overlook subtractive changes* (that's literally the name of the paper). If your software product is so complex that the only *bearable* way to work with it is with AI... then I don't want to touch them with a laser pointer. Nowadays, we rarely need more. We often need less, less, less. Let's normalize removing complexity.

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