There's also this cycle of complexity most programmers go through.

For example, I remember when I was told patterns were important, the time I put in memorizing, implementing and reviewing all these patterns, reading GoF, etc... Now, I'd just like something that works. Patterns are great for recognizing how code is intended to function, but tests are still the only way to verify the implementation of nontrivial code. And the smaller each contained unit of logic is, the more testable. So modularity and sensible, predictable interfaces are all you need.

I used to overengineer a lot more in my younger days. Now I'm just smarter about writing extensible code up front and improving it as I go.