For software, “simple” means easy to read, understand, and correctly modify.
Complexity is stupid. Simplicity is smart.
Please note: Max Kanat-Alexander was the person responsible at Google for code health.
He has authored a (imho very fine!) book on “Code Simplicity”, which he made available for-free.
I quote from this book again:
Why Simplicity?
If any appliance in my house malfunctioned as often as my computer does, I would return it. Users (and sometimes even programmers) have become used the idea that “software just has bugs.” People seem to just accept that systems will bloat over time, becoming unmaintainable and unstable monstrosities that eventually have to be thrown away and re-written. But none of this is inevitable. Instability, bloat, and various other code problems don’t arise out of some natural law of the universe that requires all software to suck. Instead, they arise almost entirely out of complexity
Max Kanat-Alexander, again…