Alright, let’s talk about “simplício.” It sounds nice, doesn’t it? Simple. Easy. That’s what I was after, not too long ago. Just wanted to build something straightforward, get it done, and move on. You know, keep it all very… simplício.
The “Simple” Plan
So, I had this idea. I wanted to make a really basic website for myself. Nothing fancy. Just a page, maybe with a bit about what I do, a photo, that kind of thing. Like the old days, you know? Just plain HTML, a sprinkle of CSS. How hard could that be? Super simple, I thought. Famous last words, right?
I figured, I’ll just open a text editor, bang out some code, and boom. Done. Simplício achieved.
Where “Simplício” Goes to Die
Well, that was the dream. Then reality hits you like a ton of bricks. First, it was like, “Okay, this looks terrible on my phone.” So, bam, responsive design. Media queries. Fine, still sort of in the ‘simple’ ballpark, if you squint.
Then I thought, “Hey, a little contact form would be neat!” Oh boy. Suddenly, I’m thinking about backend stuff. Or do I use one of those third-party form services? Then there’s spam. Gotta have a CAPTCHA. My “simplício” plan was already starting to look a bit messy.
And then, hosting! “I’ll just find some easy free hosting,” I told myself. That led me down a rabbit hole. GitHub Pages, Netlify, Vercel… all cool, but they all have their own little quirks, their build systems. “You should really use a static site generator!” people say. So now I’m looking at:
- Jekyll
- Hugo
- Eleventy
- A dozen others
All this, just for a page that was supposed to be a handful of HTML files. My head was spinning. Where did my “simplício” go?
And don’t even get me started on “optimizations.” “Your images are too big!” “You need to minify your CSS and JavaScript!” Before I knew it, I was looking at build tools. Webpack this, Parcel that. For a website that was meant to be, like, aggressively simple. It felt like I needed a PhD just to put up a digital “hello world.”
Why This Whole “Simplício” Thing Gets Me
You know, this whole charade reminded me so much of this one project I was on. Oh man. It was supposed to be this “quick and simple” internal tool. That’s what the manager kept saying, over and over. “Keep it simplício, folks! Simplício!” He loved that word. Probably didn’t even know what it really meant.
But then the feature requests started piling in. “Can it just do this one more thing?” “Oh, and it needs to integrate with that ancient system nobody understands.” “And single sign-on, obviously, that’s simple, right?” My “simplício” tool ballooned into this absolute monster. It was slow, buggy, and everyone hated using it, including us, the people building it.
I remember one specific week. We were trying to add this “tiny” new feature. It broke everything. The existing code was such a tangled mess, a patchwork of “simple” additions that created a complex nightmare. I was pulling my hair out, staring at the screen at 3 AM, thinking, “This is the opposite of simplício. This is just pain.” We were all so focused on adding things, we forgot what “simple” even meant. That project, by the way, eventually got canned. Good riddance.
That experience really stuck with me. It taught me that “simplício” isn’t just a buzzword you throw around. It’s something you have to actively fight for. It means saying “no” a lot. It means drawing a line in the sand and defending it.
Back to Basics, For Real
So, that little personal webpage I wanted to build? After going through all that mental gymnastics about frameworks and build tools, I just snapped. I opened up a basic text editor, wrote the HTML from scratch, styled it with a few lines of CSS, and found some old-school shared hosting to FTP it to. Took me maybe an hour or two, tops.
And you know what? It works. It’s fast. It’s actually, genuinely simplício. It’s not going to win any design awards, but it does what it’s supposed to do. And making it felt… good. Like I’d actually accomplished something simple for a change.
So yeah, “simplício.” It’s a nice idea. But actually getting it? In this world that just loves to make everything complicated? That’s the real challenge. It’s not about the tools, not really. It’s about the mindset. And sometimes, you just gotta ignore all the noise and go back to basics.