Just Fucking Stop Overengineering

The Opening Punch

You were asked to add a button. You built a configurable component factory with a plugin system, theme support, and an event bus.

Nobody asked for that.

The feature request was 20 lines of code. You wrote 2000 because you couldn't resist the urge to "do it right." You didn't do it right. You did it complicated. And now everyone who touches your code pays the price for your architectural masturbation.

That's not engineering. That's ego with a keyboard.

The Lie You Tell Yourself

"But what if we need to extend it later?"

You don't know what you'll need later. Nobody does. You're not predicting the future—you're cosplaying as someone who can. And 90% of the time, that "future requirement" never comes. It was a fantasy you used to justify overcomplicating the present.

YAGNI isn't a suggestion. It's a law of physics. You Aren't Gonna Need It. And even if you do need it, you'll know better what "it" looks like when you actually have the requirement—not when you're guessing in a vacuum.

The code you write for imaginary requirements is worse than no code at all. It's wrong code that now has to be maintained, understood, and worked around.

The Reality Check

Here's what overengineering actually costs:

• Time now: You spent 3 days building what should have taken 3 hours
• Time later: Everyone who touches this code has to understand your architecture astronautics before they can make a simple change
• Bugs: More code means more bugs. Your abstraction layer has bugs. Your plugin system has bugs. Your event bus has race conditions.
• Onboarding: New developers stare at your code wondering why adding a tooltip requires understanding dependency injection
• Deletion: When requirements change (and they will), nobody can delete your code because nobody understands what depends on what

You didn't save future time. You borrowed against it with interest.

The Example That Hurts

The task: Display user names in a list.

What you built:

• A generic DataRenderer base class
• A ListRenderer that extends it
• A UserListRenderer that extends that
• A RenderStrategy interface for swappable rendering
• A UserNameRenderStrategy implementation
• A factory to create renderers
• Configuration files for renderer options
• Unit tests for all of the above

What you needed:

users.map(user => <li>{user.name}</li>)

That's it. That was the whole requirement. One line.

Your eight abstractions don't make this better. They make it unmaintainable. When someone needs to change how names display, they now have to trace through five files instead of changing one line.

The Future You're Creating

Overengineered codebases don't scale. They calcify. Every abstraction becomes load-bearing. Every "flexible" system becomes a rigid prison that nobody can modify without breaking something else.

The fastest, most maintainable codebases are boring. They're obvious. They do the simple thing. When they need to do more, they add the minimum necessary complexity—not a moment before.

You want to know what senior developers do? They delete code. They simplify. They push back on unnecessary complexity. They've seen enough "clever" architectures collapse under their own weight.

The best code is code you don't write.

The Closing Hammer

Before you add that abstraction, ask yourself:

• Do I have three concrete examples that need this?
• Could I solve this with a simple function instead?
• Would a junior developer understand this in 5 minutes?
• Am I solving a real problem or an imaginary one?

If you can't answer yes to the first and third questions, you're overengineering. Stop it. Write the stupid simple version. Ship it. Move on.

The users don't care about your architecture. They care about the feature working. Your teammates don't admire your abstractions. They curse them when they have to debug at 11 PM.

Just fucking stop overengineering.