--- title: You're Not Building Netflix: Stop Coding Like You Are description: Over-engineering is a common trap for intermediate developers who apply enterprise patterns and abstractions to simple problems. The article argues against... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/you-re-not-building-netflix-stop-coding-like-you-are-fvaumfnpy twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: You're Not Building Netflix: Stop Coding Like You Are | daily.dev og:description: Over-engineering is a common trap for intermediate developers who apply enterprise patterns and abstractions to simple problems. The article argues against... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/you-re-not-building-netflix-stop-coding-like-you-are-fvaumfnpy og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/FVAumFnPy.png og:image:alt: You're Not Building Netflix: Stop Coding Like You Are og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # You're Not Building Netflix: Stop Coding Like You Are **[DEV](https://daily.dev/sources/devto)** · 13 min read · 674 upvotes · 55 comments ## Summary Over-engineering is a common trap for intermediate developers who apply enterprise patterns and abstractions to simple problems. The article argues against premature abstraction, showing real examples of unnecessarily complex code that could be replaced with straightforward solutions. Key principles include: abstract only what changes frequently, wait for three use cases before creating abstractions, avoid interfaces with single implementations, and prioritize readability over architectural sophistication. Simple, boring code that solves actual problems scales better than over-architected solutions designed for hypothetical future requirements. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Community discussion Top comments from developers on daily.dev. **@feketegy** · 53 upvotes > Cross the bridge when you get there. > > It's a fact that 99.9% of projects will never get there. **@fabianletsch** · 12 upvotes > I have written my own "try to be as witty as possible" blogposts where i prompted the AI to get some witty jokes into the text and now i can't read articles like this one anymore because it feels so generic... > > What he is saying is right though, and the coding paradigm he is referencing is called "You ain't gonna need it", or in short YAGNI. **@byteoutlaw** · 9 upvotes > Okay I'll rollback! 🙃 **@zshall** · 6 upvotes > This article makes me so happy. The old quote about "you must be twice as clever to debug a program than to write it, so if you're as clever as can be when writing it how will you ever debug it?" applies here. Years ago I used to think the more code I wrote the better the software (enterprise software has a lot of code so if mine has a lot of lines of code too then mine must be enterprise quality!) but it makes it impossible to understand what's being done. Unless you're writing some sort of ERP system that needs to be all things for all people there's likely a simpler way to do stuff that's... **@gerhardjustolsen** · 5 upvotes > Quote "The goal is solving problems with the minimum viable complexity" I love it! So MVC? ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Your job isn't programming](https://daily.dev/posts/your-job-isn-t-programming-9tv8vusyc) · Lobsters · 1 upvotes · 1 comments --- Tags: [#webdev](https://daily.dev/tags/webdev), [#architecture](https://daily.dev/tags/architecture), [#typescript](https://daily.dev/tags/typescript), [#design-patterns](https://daily.dev/tags/design-patterns) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/you-re-not-building-netflix-stop-coding-like-you-are-fvaumfnpy) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"You're Not Building Netflix: Stop Coding Like You Are","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/you-re-not-building-netflix-stop-coding-like-you-are-fvaumfnpy","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/you-re-not-building-netflix-stop-coding-like-you-are-fvaumfnpy"},"datePublished":"2025-11-25T14:35:43.815Z","dateModified":"2025-11-25T14:36:11.151Z","description":"Over-engineering is a common trap for intermediate developers who apply enterprise patterns and abstractions to simple problems. 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Bonde","url":"https://daily.dev/byteoutlaw","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--veTChHK7--/f_auto/v1733220070/avatars/avatar_5cQvIZKr5tDFDotVDjulg"},"interactionStatistic":{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":9}},{"@type":"Comment","text":"This article makes me so happy. The old quote about “you must be twice as clever to debug a program than to write it, so if you’re as clever as can be when writing it how will you ever debug it?” applies here. Years ago I used to think the more code I wrote the better the software (enterprise software has a lot of code so if mine has a lot of lines of code too then mine must be enterprise quality!) but it makes it impossible to understand what’s being done. Unless you’re writing some sort of ERP system that needs to be all things for all people there’s likely a simpler way to do stuff that’s easier to maintain.","datePublished":"2025-11-26T15:02:38.983Z","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/FVAumFnPy#c-ZNMiFYtkR","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"Zach Hall","url":"https://daily.dev/zshall","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--CtDLyB4P--/f_auto/v1768590830/avatars/avatar_ygBucXJAtF8KUCrr6Y2eQ?_a=BAMAMiiu0"},"interactionStatistic":{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":6}},{"@type":"Comment","text":"Quote “The goal is solving problems with the minimum viable complexity” I love it! So MVC?","datePublished":"2025-11-27T05:42:42.747Z","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/FVAumFnPy#c-lCbO2EXuP","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"Gerhard Just Olsen","url":"https://daily.dev/gerhardjustolsen","image":"https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/a/ACg8ocLpO6n4gkblx2ykTGRTK2RBUcsn_2q2jQP6WMaTRioXCEb1z1mJ8w=s96-c"},"interactionStatistic":{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":5}}]} ```