Why We Build Simple Software

My general experience has been the problems people want me to solve are not the actual problems that they need to solve.

The problems that need to be solved have very simple solutions.

The purported solutions to the purported problems are usually a way to avoid doing the simple solutions because it is "inconvenient" to people who want the other solution.

Maybe I'm jaded. Maybe I've had a bad lot. But it's happened enough, and in enough disparate instances, for me to think this is just humanity being humanity.

edit to add a caveat -- this applies generally, i.e. to most people most of the time. i feel like i cast a bit of a wide net with how this comment has been phrased.

No, it isn't. It is extremely complicated, containing two different mechanisms for propulsions, complex mechanical linkages for those propulsion mechanisms and steering, a deep web of electrical components including large software projects, augmenting the driving characteristics and providing essential safety features and much, much more.

It was painstakingly designed by thousands of engineers, who tried to take everything into account and to present to you something which to you "feels right", although you have zero idea about why it does.

Calling such a thing simple is completely ridiculous. As if the thousands of engineers were just superfluous and you could design a car by slapping together some components and have it work flawlessly. This is a highly integrated system, where a change to any single one component can influence all other components in very strange ways. That it is reliable, is not because it is simple, it is reliable because someone else has dealt with that complexity for you and spent an enormous amount of effort to get it right.

To be honest the arrogance of software developers is astounding. Looking at an enormously complicated project, which had to take into account a vast array of requirements and had to deal with all the complexity of mechanical, electrical and software systems working together and then going "that is simple, we should do simple things like they do", because the engineers working on it managed to hide all of that from you, speaks of so much arrogance. Just open up the hood and look at it. Look at it.

In over forty five years of driving I have never changed a wheel beside the road. I have had two punctures and one blowout in that time. The first two were close enough to home to just drive home slowly and then drive to the nearest tyre fitter for a replacement and the last happened at night on a narrow sloping country road where jacking up the car would have been impossible even if I had been willing to risk being run down on a road barely wide enough for two cars.

they also include patch and inflate kit for such cases?..