The Grug Brained Developer A layman's guide to thinking like the self-aware smol brained

Abstraction: Anti-complexity software development philosophy from htmx author

Key points:

• Complexity is the "apex predator" of software; the best weapon is "no" — refusing features and abstractions early, using 80/20 solutions
• Do not factor/abstract code too early; wait for natural "cut points" with narrow interfaces to emerge from the codebase as understanding grows
• Integration tests are the sweet spot over unit tests (which break on refactors) or end-to-end tests (which are hard to debug); small curated E2E suites for critical paths only
• Prefer locality of behavior over separation of concerns — code should live near the thing it affects, not in separate files
• Type system value is mostly autocomplete ("hit dot, see what you can do"), not formal correctness; excessive generics invite complexity demons
• Fear of Looking Dumb (FOLD) is a major source of complexity; senior developers admitting confusion gives juniors permission to do the same

Connections: Htmx · Software Complexity · Software Engineering · Locality Of Behavior

Source: https://grugbrain.dev/