Smolnet engineering

From random remarks on IRC, I think I've distilled the engineering principles that inform so-called "smolnet" engineering:

• we don't care about asking people to install new software
• complexity must be limited to what a single programmer can write in a weekend or so
• we don't require the use of legacy Certificate Authorities, but we do require TLS
• extensibility is frowned on
• there's substantial reuse of existing standards and libraries

I note that if extensibility were permitted, any system would likely grow in complexity to the point where a single individual can no longer make an implementation alone.