I think (as applied to technology) it is originally an adage from Alan Kay and he worded it as “Simple things should be simple, complex things should be possible.” It wasn’t about any specific technology but rather for what they were building at PARC.

https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-story-behind-Alan-Kay-s-ad...

Larry Wall adopted (adapted?) it for Perl:

“In a nutshell, Perl is designed to make the easy jobs easy, without making the hard jobs impossible.”

https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-origin-of-the-phrase-make-...