The practical significance of elegance has been contested, but that is only a social phenomenon caused by the fact that elegance requires great care to be achieved and education to be appreciated. In contrast we shall stress that in sophisticated designs, elegance is not a dispensable luxury, but a factor that often decides between success and failure.
Dijkstra argues that elegance in design should not be treated as decoration or personal taste. He defines elegance in practical terms: a solution should be both simple and effective. In sufficiently complex systems, this quality can affect whether a design remains understandable, manageable and ultimately successful.
He also explains why elegance may be undervalued. Producing a simple solution can require substantial effort, while recognising its quality may depend on experience and education. Complexity can therefore appear more substantial even when it makes a design harder to reason about.
The quotation presents elegance as a functional design principle. Its value lies in reducing unnecessary complication while preserving what the system must accomplish. Applied more broadly, it encourages designers to judge sophistication not by the amount of complexity present, but by how effectively complexity has been controlled.