Right on!

The second category is careful balance of all the conflicting requirements (stated and unstated). Yes, most programmers fall into the Messy category. They leave behind an unmaintainable mess.

However, it is imprecise to describe Messy Programmers with positive words like simple and perfect. Most of the time the “simple” programmer is writing code that ignores real-world use. He makes production systems that crash easily and no one can figure out why. The “perfect” programmer writes code that no one can decipher. He also makes production systems that crash often and no one can figure out why.

The person I call the Neat Programmer is neither fast nor slow; he rides the middle ground. He ensures that his code is understandable, maintainable, extendable, and testable–but not at the cost of creating whizbang frameworks when much less is required.

I meant “least effort”, but that’s how I define simplicity. The simplest solution, as you pointed out, is not necessarily the first that comes to mind.