Thanks for the insightful article! I whole-heartedly agree with your recommendations. As a developer who was a designer in another life, here are my thoughts:

1. Developers love building "hard" things. But we are also problem-solvers who are obsessed with efficiency and breaking down large chunks of work into digestible bits. More often than not, when we suggest a simpler solution, we are thinking about how we can deliver a good enough experience now and enhance it in steps, instead of the best experience much later. It is important for both sides to understand and balance the tradeoffs to make a decision. This leads to my second point.

2. From my experience in presenting designs to clients and developers, I find it really helpful to focus on the why's of a design in addition to the what's – What is the design goal of this screen or this group of elements? How is this complex component going to help us achieve that versus a simpler one? The more people understand how the dots are connected to become a bigger sum, the less resistance we will get.

I like to think of designers and developers as different types of musicians in an orchestra. Each of us excels in a different type of instrument. But we must understand how each others' instruments sound in order to accompany others well. There should be no us versus them. If we work well with each other, we would get a well-performed symphony in the end.