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We Who Value Simplicity Have Built Incomprehensible Machines

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Re: We Who Value Simplicity Have Built Incomprehensible Machines

#21

Post by MortenK »

f45s8g2 wrote: post #12

It's because some people really do like complexity. They like writing 200 pages of documentation. And some like reading it. They want complexity. Keep adding stuff. I remember reading one of the Windows programmers' hero's writing about some massive document of several hundred pages he wrote while on the Excel team at Microsoft and being overjoyed when he learned Bill Gates had actually looked at it. I remember readi…

What you are arguing for is efficiency, not simplicity. Cryptic and highly compact routines, symbols instead of telling names and memory / disk space conservation beyond the point of diminishing returns, all increase complexity, rather than reduce it.

Re: We Who Value Simplicity Have Built Incomprehensible Machines

#22

Post by f45s8g2 »

bluedanieru wrote: post #16
f45s8g2 wrote: post #12

It's because some people really do like complexity. They like writing 200 pages of documentation. And some like reading it. They want complexity. Keep adding stuff. I remember reading one of the Windows programmers' hero's writing about some massive document of several hundred pages he wrote while on the Excel team at Microsoft and being overjoyed when he learned Bill Gates had actually looked at it. I remember readi…

Why is each sentence on its own line?

For simplicity, of course. ;)

Re: We Who Value Simplicity Have Built Incomprehensible Machines

#24

Post by joe_the_user »

I have spent the last two years creating a desktop GUI application more-or-less from the ground up. I used a bit of existing code but most of the choices were mine.

It was only "evolutionary" in the sense that I don't necessarily know everything I was thinking last month. But is easily enough to give the system many of the irrational qualities that I once cursed other people's systems for.

I also never had any deadline pressure. The whole system needs to get done but there's no other time line pressure. I can and do stop to rewrite subsystems that seem bad. I can and do write all the tests I would like to.

It's amazing to me how little any of this has helped with the fundamental problems. The code is better, the parts of the system that need to be optimized are optimized but the screaming at the code is still there. The "how did things reach this state is still there".

So what seems like the point of the article, that massive complexity happens through many small, unintended consequences, really rings true.

Re: We Who Value Simplicity Have Built Incomprehensible Machines

#26

Post by david927 »

haberman wrote: post #20

What insight does the author have to offer with this essay? It's easy to complain about complexity, harder to offer a simpler but equally capable alternative. The author makes it sound like simple is easy. As if it's just a matter of saying no to complexity, like saying no to memcpy() whenever we have a memmove() that's good enough. This is not the case. Simple is not easy. On the contrary, simple is hard . So you th…

The failure isn't in that we're adding too much complexity (we have to be able to create complex structures) or that we're not layering it enough (leaky abstractions build up). It's a general, and much more far-reaching, problem: our abstraction mechanisms are failing us. We need to stop complaining and put more effort into research. There are four or five projects working on this and, literally, hundreds of photo-sharing startups.

Re: We Who Value Simplicity Have Built Incomprehensible Machines

#27

Post by [deleted] »

MortenK wrote: post #21
f45s8g2 wrote: post #12

It's because some people really do like complexity. They like writing 200 pages of documentation. And some like reading it. They want complexity. Keep adding stuff. I remember reading one of the Windows programmers' hero's writing about some massive document of several hundred pages he wrote while on the Excel team at Microsoft and being overjoyed when he learned Bill Gates had actually looked at it. I remember readi…

What you are arguing for is efficiency, not simplicity. Cryptic and highly compact routines, symbols instead of telling names and memory / disk space conservation beyond the point of diminishing returns, all increase complexity, rather than reduce it.

[deleted]

Re: We Who Value Simplicity Have Built Incomprehensible Machines

#28

Post by jasomill »

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, in a moment of reasoned lucidity which is almost unique among its current tally of five million, nine hundred and seventy-three thousand, five hundred and nine pages, says of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation products that "it is very easy to be blinded to the essential uselessness of them by the sense of achievement you get from getting them to work at all.

"In other words --- and this is the rock-solid principle on which the whole of the Corporation's Galaxywide success is founded --- their fundamental design flaws are completely hidden by their superficial design flaws."

Re: We Who Value Simplicity Have Built Incomprehensible Machines

#29

Post by jasomill »

jasomill wrote: post #28

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy , in a moment of reasoned lucidity which is almost unique among its current tally of five million, nine hundred and seventy-three thousand, five hundred and nine pages, says of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation products that "it is very easy to be blinded to the essential uselessness of them by the sense of achievement you get from getting them to work at all. "In other words ---…

(Douglas Adams, So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish)

Re: We Who Value Simplicity Have Built Incomprehensible Machines

#30

Post by lnanek »

How is breaking backward compatibility simpler? If you don't support legacy commands and options you are forcing countless programs to be rewritten. Many aren't even actively maintained any more and businesses will avoid upgrading to your new 'simple' platform due to the huge cost, complexity, and risk of the rewrite project not succeeding, like many software projects. That's why OpenGL has so many old methods and commands, they are used by old, expensive CAD programs.

Speaking of OpenGL, more efficient memory routines he claims are worthless have probably saved me months of optimization programming real time games. If you don't have sufficient frame rate there for a good experience you end up doing enormous optimization work.

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