What's the problem with all those options? IMHO ls is not bloated at all. It simply follows the Unix philosophy: Do just one thing, and do it "right" which means: do it as well as possible. ls actually does that. I never had any desire for another ls because ls already gives me almost all possible functionality. I am glad that I have all those options so that I don't have to write my own tool to get a special function if I really need that.

If you don't need all the options, ignore them. If ls is too complicated for you then do just as the author recommends: "write a simpler alternative to ls", and name it lf ("list files") or the like.