In the spirit of the article, I invoke a bastardized version of Chesterton's Fence[1] when writing code. If something looks overly complex (especially code written before the advent of AI slop), I try and intuit why it was written this way before changing it. 9/10 it's been for a good reason. I go ahead and add a comment to the code if I don't change it.

1: From Wikipedia, '"Chesterton's fence" is the principle that reforms should not be made until the reasoning behind the existing state of affairs is understood.' In my own words, you don't rip out a seemingly-stupid thing without first figuring out why it's there.