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The Danger of “Simplicity”

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Re: The Danger of “Simplicity”

#31

Post by simongray »

ajdegol wrote: post #9
ds_ wrote: post #5

"Simple is often erroneously mistaken for easy. 'Easy' means 'to be at hand', 'to be approachable'. 'Simple' is the opposite of 'complex' which means 'being intertwined', 'being tied together'" - https://www.infoq.com/presentations/Simple-Made-Easy/

If you haven't seen this talk; watching it will make you a 10x better programmer. This is what I take for my definition of complex and it applies broadly in a very practical manner.

Also: try out Clojure (... the programming language created by Rich Hickey based on this principle).

Re: The Danger of “Simplicity”

#32

Post by radicalbyte »

Ma8ee wrote: post #29
heinrich5991 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>watching it will make you a 10x better programmer. That sounds wrong. Can we drop this rhetoric?

It's obviously hyperbole.

It needs to be rephrased into this:

"Watching this video will make you into a developer who is respected 10x more by their peers."

Re: The Danger of “Simplicity”

#33

Post by username90 »

ds_ wrote: post #5

"Simple is often erroneously mistaken for easy. 'Easy' means 'to be at hand', 'to be approachable'. 'Simple' is the opposite of 'complex' which means 'being intertwined', 'being tied together'" - https://www.infoq.com/presentations/Simple-Made-Easy/

They key takeaway that you should strive to be a simple person, not an easy person.

Re: The Danger of “Simplicity”

#35

Post by yahyaheee »

panpanna wrote: post #30

Let me answer this once and for all: > What are we optimizing for? You mean who are we optimizing for. For the guy who has to understand and maintain this code 2 years from now. (This guy could in fact be you yourself). Thats why I like Go. And C, now that I think about it...

Exactly, I think the article is a bit self centered and overlooks this concept

Re: The Danger of “Simplicity”

#36

Post by yahyaheee »

haolez wrote: post #17

I’m starting to think that I’m in the minority that agrees with most (if not all) Go’s design decision and appreciate Rob Pike’s stewardship so far.

That’s possible, in the early days of Go I guess they spent a lot of time trying to optimize the compiler with googles ML teams

Re: The Danger of “Simplicity”

#37

Post by Kye »

nnq wrote: post #3

There was a wise thing along the lines of "to build a simpler system, start with more powerful (and complex, by necessity) building blocks"... I think it was Alan Kay who said this or something very similar. Worst thing is that "simple" languages like Go force you to mix up "business logic" with "plumbing/infra logic" with "error handling logic" if you try to be idiomatic... I know that for security crucial code you…

I experienced a good example of this recently when trying to decide between Bitwig and an upgrade of Ableton Live Lite to Suite.

Suite comes with a full-featured audio programming environment called Max for Live. It has some high level devices for common functions, but you can go very low level and make just about anything. The building blocks are all very simple and basic: oscillators, math functions, routing, etc.

Bitwig's Grid takes a different approach with a small number of powerful building blocks. The range of possibilities is smaller, but you can be more productive if the thing you want to make is composable from the available devices.

Re: The Danger of “Simplicity”

#38

Post by brlewis »

The article refers to "the much-abused YAGNI" and links to another blog post that goes into detail. Apparently some people take YAGNI to mean never anticipate anything. Is that your experience? I've always taken it as a tie-breaker when you're unsure whether to anticipate or not, and I've had the impression that others take it the same way.

Overall I like this article and the YAGNI one it links to.

Re: The Danger of “Simplicity”

#39

Post by nkrisc »

blondin wrote: post #8
ds_ wrote: post #5

"Simple is often erroneously mistaken for easy. 'Easy' means 'to be at hand', 'to be approachable'. 'Simple' is the opposite of 'complex' which means 'being intertwined', 'being tied together'" - https://www.infoq.com/presentations/Simple-Made-Easy/

wouldn't say simple is the opposite of complex though? especially when talking about software systems or other systems in general. what i am thinking is that some complex systems can be made of very simple components. the best example is our complex brain being made of simpler components working together. maybe the opposite of complex is chaotic? i don't know...

A very big object can be made of lots of small objects, but that doesn't mean big isn't the opposite of small.
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