I’ve always like the essential/accidental complexity split. It can be hard to find, but for a problem solving perspective, it may defines what’s fun and what’s a chore.

I’ve been reading the OpenBSD lately and it’s quite nice how they’ve split the general OS concepts from the machine dependent needs. And the general way they’ve separated interfaces and implementation.

I believe that once you’ve solve the essential problem, the rest becomes way easier as you got a direction. But doing accidental problem solving without having done the essential one is pure misery.