quality-simplicity.md

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title: Prioritize Clarity Over Cleverness impact: HIGH impactDescription: Reduces cognitive load and improves maintainability tags: quality, simplicity, readability

Паспорт документа

• Статус документа: living standard
• Актуально на: 28 марта 2026 года
• Владелец: backend/platform-команда
• Пересмотр: при изменении инженерной практики, CI/CD, архитектурных правил или локального workflow
• Область применения: внутренние rule/reference-card документы для инженерной команды
• Связанные документы:
  • Индекс Agents
  • Команды разработки
  • Инженерные принципы

Prioritize Clarity Over Cleverness

Impact: HIGH

The goal is code that is easy to read and understand quickly, not elegant complexity. Simple systems reduce the cognitive load for every engineer.

Questions to ask yourself:

• Am I actually solving the problem at hand?
• Am I thinking too much about possible future use cases?
• Have I considered at least 1 other alternative? How does it compare?

Incorrect (clever but hard to understand):

const result = data.reduce((a, b) => ({...a, [b.id]: (a[b.id] || []).concat(b)}), {});

Correct (clear and readable):

const groupedById: Record<string, Item[]> = {};

for (const item of data) {
  if (!groupedById[item.id]) {
    groupedById[item.id] = [];
  }
  groupedById[item.id].push(item);
}

Important note: Simple doesn't mean lacking in features. Just because our goal is to create simple systems, this doesn't mean they should feel anemic and lacking obvious functionality.