Two forms of complexity in Euclidean plane geometry are considered. In the first one, problems are described algebraically, and the complexity level is measured essentially by the degree of a polynomial. As a consequence, many familiar and general results in geometry can be proved by inspecting two or three special cases. The second form uses the syntactic description of a theorem allowing for a quanti.cation of the complexity in logic terms (number of quantifiers and atoms in the formula). Inspired by this approach, some procedures in mechanized proofs are described. We also present some traditional groups of operations in geometry which simplify the two approaches. The study of more advanced techniques in mathematics sheds new light on standard high school topics.