I have enough opinions now to make a Manifesto! Hereby:

DON'T MAKE MESSES

“Simplicity is a great virtue but it requires hard work to achieve it and education to appreciate it. And to make matters worse: complexity sells better.”

― Edsger W. Dijkstra

There is a saying that simplicity is complicated. This is one of Rob Pike's (golang) maxims, and it's been used to justify a bunch of messes. Behind simplicity should be ... more simplicity.

ELIMINATE TEDIUM

Ward Cunningham (wiki, agile manifesto) on "The Simplest Thing that Could Possibly Work":

"I actually enjoy complexity that's empowering. If it challenges me, the complexity is very pleasant. But sometimes I must deal with complexity that's disempowering. The effort I invest to understand that complexity is tedious work. It doesn't add anything to my abilities."

I am easily bored. If it's tedious, I just won't bother with it. The hard stuff isn't tedious. If you find that it is, break it up until it's all over the floor in non-tedious, easy stuff.

IN GENERAL

"Life is a blur of REPUBLICANS and MEAT!"

-- Zippy