"At each stage, you get enough feedback to judge the right direction for the next iteration."

Depends on the project I would say. What do you do, if all of a sudden the requirements change again? Or the plattform evolved/degraded? Then you compromise - and I can better compromise with simple solution. And I would never claim simple equals easy. Rather the opposite. Like you said, it is easy to make complex things. Also I never applied design patterns for the sake of it(even though it might have sounded like it) KISS was part of the theories as well.. but I did value emphasized cleverness too much as I thought that this is the way it is supposed to be done.

My resume is: simple direct solutions are to be prefered and trying to be clever is not very clever.

I rather have 3 lines of code, than one compressed clever one, no one can understand the first time reading it. And the same goes for the bigger design picture.

Re: this whole conversation, you might find this quick video a worthwhile watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrwxC9taL8w