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Why We Build Simple Software

blog.pickcode.io

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21–30 of 32 posts

Re: Why We Build Simple Software

#21

Post by riku_iki »

PedroBatista wrote: post #15

> In the last three years, I’ve driven it 40,000 miles and I’ve never had to take it in for maintenance. I'm sorry, what? Please don't do this, people. It ruins completely good engines and the poor guy who gets this car with high mileage will be the one with the grenade on his hands. Now with the software part. Keeping the software as "human sized" as possible and the ones who build it on the hook for support ( cheap…

> It ruins completely good engines

I am wondering if car has some sensors for this: oil level is low, engine starts overheating etc.

Re: Why We Build Simple Software

#22

Post by SkyPuncher »

nuancebydefault wrote: post #3

> I drive a 2020 Toyota Corolla Hybrid,... it is simple. No car is simple and certainly not hybrid cars. Just consider the electronics: think 100+ ECUs communicating using dozens of different protocols over hundreds meters of wires, and millions of lines of code running on a diverse set of processors.

Simple from the user perspective. That’s the point of all of this. It’s can be complicated under the hood, but the IX is simple.

Re: Why We Build Simple Software

#23

Post by mhnthrow »

constantcrying wrote: post #14

>My car is simple No, it isn't. It is extremely complicated, containing two different mechanisms for propulsions, complex mechanical linkages for those propulsion mechanisms and steering, a deep web of electrical components including large software projects, augmenting the driving characteristics and providing essential safety features and much, much more. It was painstakingly designed by thousands of engineers, who…

What's described in the article is the perception of simplicity from a user perspective. The relationship with the car is simple. The surface area the user interfaces with for common tasks is simple. The overall concept the user has in their mind of how to operate a car is simple.

This user experience is the result of all the hard work done by the thousands of engineers and others involved. You seem offended on their behalf, but what the article is doing is actually praising their success. It doesn't describe anything about the internals of the car or the work done to design it, only the final _feature set_.

IMO this is just marketing content. A company wants to distinguish itself by claiming to offer a small, high-quality and easy-to-understand feature set that matters to a certain customers, instead of trading more functionality on paper for less "simplicity".

It might be true that they've found the exact right balance for their market. Or maybe they have constraints that prevent them from developing a broader range of features in parallel and that this is just spin.

I think it's not really about cars, is all I'm saying. The car is just a throwaway metaphor, and not a really great one.

Re: Why We Build Simple Software

#24

Post by dimal »

lovethevoid wrote: post #8
dimal wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To this day Outlook is pretty much table stakes for working in a corporate environment Then Superhuman made a tool to simply deal with email quickly and easily (using vim key bindings no less) and charges $30 a month for it. There’s still a market for simplicity if you look for it.

How is that a market for simplicity when it’s a tool built on top of and for gmail+outlook that also combines AI for additional email management (with dev-specific additions like vim)?

It’s the interface. Compared to Outlook, it’s dead simple. It abstracts gmail/outlook away, and doesn’t give you ALL the features of Outlook. It just gives you what you really need. And it’s not dev-specific, they’ve just somehow taught all their users to use vim-style hotkeys to process email faster. I do see a trend of the. adding non-essentials now that they’re successful, but so far the AI additions are minor and haven’t gotten in the way, for me at least.

Re: Why We Build Simple Software

#25

Post by pkolaczk »

constantcrying wrote: post #14

>My car is simple No, it isn't. It is extremely complicated, containing two different mechanisms for propulsions, complex mechanical linkages for those propulsion mechanisms and steering, a deep web of electrical components including large software projects, augmenting the driving characteristics and providing essential safety features and much, much more. It was painstakingly designed by thousands of engineers, who…

Compared to many other ICE cars, Toyota hybrid drivechain is relatively simple. There is no turbocharger, no double-mass wheel, no starter engine, no DPF, the transmission has no other moving parts than just a few rotating planetary gears (constantly engaged), no clutch, no microclutches, no momentum converter. There are fewer moving parts than in a manual transmission, and forget any other classic automatic transmission. E.g. in comparison, DSG complexity is atrocious (and unreliability famous). In exchange there are 2 electric engines and a battery - but that’s all quite simple and reliable technology.

Re: Why We Build Simple Software

#26

Post by sam_bristow »

SkyPuncher wrote: post #22
nuancebydefault wrote: post #3

> I drive a 2020 Toyota Corolla Hybrid,... it is simple. No car is simple and certainly not hybrid cars. Just consider the electronics: think 100+ ECUs communicating using dozens of different protocols over hundreds meters of wires, and millions of lines of code running on a diverse set of processors.

Simple from the user perspective. That’s the point of all of this. It’s can be complicated under the hood, but the IX is simple.

A modern car is a great example of abstraction. There's a lot of functionality and complexity hidden behind a very simple interface.

Re: Why We Build Simple Software

#27

Post by lancesells »

utensil4778 wrote: post #19
kwhitefoot wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because they are a waste of space, money, and energy? In over forty five years of driving I have never changed a wheel beside the road. I have had two punctures and one blowout in that time. The first two were close enough to home to just drive home slowly and then drive to the nearest tyre fitter for a replacement and the last happened at night on a narrow sloping country road where jacking up the car would have bee…

> tyre Believe it or not, the UK is not the entire world. In the US, we have vast stretches of highway with nothing in sight. You can pretty easily find yourself many miles away from the nearest town and with no cell service to call for help. If you get a flat in the middle of the actual desert we have, you're absolutely fucked without a spare. Your options are to wait and hope someone else drives by to offer help or…

I agree a spare is good to have but if I'm stuck in the desert without water I'll drive the car with a flat.

Re: Why We Build Simple Software

#28

Post by lancesells »

PedroBatista wrote: post #15

> In the last three years, I’ve driven it 40,000 miles and I’ve never had to take it in for maintenance. I'm sorry, what? Please don't do this, people. It ruins completely good engines and the poor guy who gets this car with high mileage will be the one with the grenade on his hands. Now with the software part. Keeping the software as "human sized" as possible and the ones who build it on the hook for support ( cheap…

I have a feeling the author is not counting oil changes.

Re: Why We Build Simple Software

#29

Post by lovethevoid »

dimal wrote: post #24
lovethevoid wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is that a market for simplicity when it’s a tool built on top of and for gmail+outlook that also combines AI for additional email management (with dev-specific additions like vim)?

It’s the interface. Compared to Outlook, it’s dead simple. It abstracts gmail/outlook away, and doesn’t give you ALL the features of Outlook. It just gives you what you really need. And it’s not dev-specific, they’ve just somehow taught all their users to use vim-style hotkeys to process email faster. I do see a trend of the. adding non-essentials now that they’re successful, but so far the AI additions are minor and…

Superficial simplicity I suppose.

Re: Why We Build Simple Software

#30

Post by namaria »

jameskilton wrote: post #9

I get what the author is trying to say but there's a fundamental difference between "complexity" and "complicated". Life is complex (and often quite complicated). Most actual solutions that people need are solving complex problems. You can't really solve complex problems with simple software, you'll just end up building a complex (and often complicated) web of simple solutions. Our job as software engineers is to pre…

I'm of the opinion that nothing is ever simple. We live in a fascinatingly complex universe, and the closer you look the more information you can see packed inside everything.

Simple is just a name we attach to domains of well understood, well managed complexity.

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