The OP's point is that being able to produce a simple solution to a complex problem only seems like the product of "refusing to be smart" from the outside. From the inside, there's always a delicate balancing act - each step involves choosing approaches that may generate complexity just in different ways. The same data used in different places in the application? What do you do? Objects? Globals? Cut-and-paste. Any of those solutions might be fully justified or might degenerate into a tangle by the time the application is done. Once, if you have a nice, simple working application, you can say "it's all just 'grug'" but that's essentially what they a call "humble brag".