Comment by kevinak
Yeah, although I would argue that there are far fewer moving pieces in Nostr than there are in ATProto and that's part of why it's so simple - it's just clients and relays. That's it!
Edit: another thing I thought about just now is that you don't really have to worry about implementing most NIPs - many are not relevant if you're just building an application. All the Bitcoin Lightning Network stuff, for example, or private messaging, Blossom, etc.
yes, "there are too many NIPs!" feels like a red herring. at the moment, as a developer, i feel comfortable picking and choosing which NIPs i might want to use for whatever i'm building. but i can also understand why that might be a little confusing/frustrating to others. might be a education/communication issue more than anything else.
both projects are "controlled chaos", where nostr is a little heavier on the "chaos", atproto is a little heavier on the "control".