Complexity Has to Live Somewhere
Complexity is like energy, it cannot be created or destroyed, it is a fundamental property of any process or thing.<p>However, complexity can be managed. Humans do this using abstraction as a tool. We divide the complex problem up into a sequence of several simpler states, and we find it easier to understand the simpler problems <i>along with</i> the sequence within which they lie.<p>Good software uses this same approach to reduce complex issues to a manageable process. A good tool makes the simple things easy and the complex thing possible, the design of the tool reflects the effort and work that the designer out in to  u the problem they’re trying to solve, and to produce something that helps guide others along that self-same path of understanding, without them having to put in the same level of effort; it establishes the golden path through the marshes and bogs of difficulties that the problem domain throws up.<p>“Embracing complexity” is a measure of last resort, IMHO. It means the tool developer could not analyze the problem and come up with a good solution; it means “here, you figure it out”; it means giving up on one of the fundamental reasons for the tools existence.<p><i>Sometimes</i>, embracing complexity and the ensuing struggle that this necessitates is simply what you have to do, but not often. Maybe, <i>maybe</i> this is one of those times, but I always start off with a critical eye when someone tells me that a complicated thing is “the only way it can be done”. Colour me sceptical.