simplicity is in the eye of beholder

I've been recently discussing a design with someone. We both wanted the design to be simple but disagreed about the details. Eventually I've realized that we wanted the different kinds of simplicity.

For him, the simplicity was in the compact protocol messages. And if the endpoint logic to handle them becomes arcane, so be it.

For me, the simplicity was in the simple logic of the endpoints, and if the messages become larger and exchanged more frequently, so be it. (There are of course cases where the bandwidth matters but here the control messages represented a minor overhead either way).