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Do the simplest thing that can possibly work (2004)

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Re: Do the simplest thing that can possibly work (2004)

#31

Post by Zetice »

addaon wrote: post #13
majkinetor wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Simple is something that either can't be reduced further without changing the output (ideal, simplest), or it is very hard to do so (real world).

But this ignores, as in my example, who pays for the complexity. I want a bagel. Is it simplest for me to start tilling the land and looking for wild wheat relatives to breed, or to drive my incredibly complex car built in centuries of industrialization to the corner store and buy (using money, one of the most complex concepts we've developed!) a bagel, bring it home in a plastic (!!!) bag, and stick it in the toaste…

I don't think the person you're replying to would consider "till the land" as fitting what they're describing as "simple".

Re: Do the simplest thing that can possibly work (2004)

#32

Post by addaon »

Zetice wrote: post #31
addaon wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But this ignores, as in my example, who pays for the complexity. I want a bagel. Is it simplest for me to start tilling the land and looking for wild wheat relatives to breed, or to drive my incredibly complex car built in centuries of industrialization to the corner store and buy (using money, one of the most complex concepts we've developed!) a bagel, bring it home in a plastic (!!!) bag, and stick it in the toaste…

I don't think the person you're replying to would consider "till the land" as fitting what they're describing as "simple".

It's a requirement for making a bagel… the question is whether I do it, or someone else. Part of the irreducible complexity of bagelness is the production process of wheat.

Re: Do the simplest thing that can possibly work (2004)

#34

Post by deathanatos »

Then launch that MVP into production, and never be given an ounce of time by your PM to fix any of the shortcomings that you thought were not part of "Do the Simplest Thing". Iterate on that principle for new features, too: what's the simplest way to get this new feature out? And this one?

And then find yourself surrounded by tech debt an a system that was cobbled together, not designed.

Re: Do the simplest thing that can possibly work (2004)

#35

Post by majkinetor »

addaon wrote: post #32
Zetice wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the person you're replying to would consider "till the land" as fitting what they're describing as "simple".

It's a requirement for making a bagel… the question is whether I do it, or someone else. Part of the irreducible complexity of bagelness is the production process of wheat.

You are not producing a bagel. You are obtaining it. There is a big difference. Once nobody produces a bagel, your method is meaningless.

Re: Do the simplest thing that can possibly work (2004)

#36

Post by blippage »

MVP: Minimal Viable Product.

The greatest example of this is Unix.

Multics was a huge produce that failed (initially). Bell Labs washed their hands of it, and didn't want anything to do with Operating Systems again.

Ken Thompson wrote an initial scrappy version of Unix in 3 weeks. Re-writing to C was a tremendous move because it meant that Unix could be ported easily to many other systems.

I heard someone say that the genius of Dennis Ritchie was that he knew how to get 90% of the solution using only 10% of the work.

I'm working my way through Unix Haters Handbook [1], and it's a good read, even for someone like myself who really likes Unix.

Unix and C are the ultimate computer viruses -- Lawrence Krubner

[1] https://web.mit.edu/~simsong/www/ugh.pdf

Re: Do the simplest thing that can possibly work (2004)

#37

Post by majkinetor »

xiphias2 wrote: post #15
addaon wrote: post #4

This write-up is too light to provide any real insight. In particular, how do you assess simplicity? From an example I'm currently working through on a hobby project... do I use a RS-485 transceiver with a custom line code, or do I use a 10base-T1 PHY? Ethernet, especially one pair ethernet, is undoubtedly more /complex/, with echo cancellation, a complicated line code, etc; but if I use the PHY, then /I own/ that co…

Actually Rick Hickey's talk ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKtk3HCgTa8 ) is amazing because he talks about your case by going back to the original meaining of words: ,,Complex comes from the Latin complecti, which means “to entwine around, to embrace'' Simplicity requires layering, so in your examples the main requirement for simplicity is about how intertwined your hobby project is with the transciever code or et…

> As long as the abstraction layer works well for you without getting too much into the details of the implementation, it's a simple solution.

You can have very large number of layers, and to understand inner goings and interconnetions of all becomes very hard.

I highly doubt you can equalize "set of superb interfaces" with simplicity.

Re: Do the simplest thing that can possibly work (2004)

#38

Post by majkinetor »

addaon wrote: post #17
xiphias2 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually Rick Hickey's talk ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKtk3HCgTa8 ) is amazing because he talks about your case by going back to the original meaining of words: ,,Complex comes from the Latin complecti, which means “to entwine around, to embrace'' Simplicity requires layering, so in your examples the main requirement for simplicity is about how intertwined your hobby project is with the transciever code or et…

> As long as the abstraction layer works well for you without getting too much into the details of the implementation, it's a simple solution. But this is where the engineering intuition has to come in. "As long as you will not end up spending more time debugging the system than implementing it" is an equivalent statement -- and that requires prediction of the future. If I'm going to spend hours staring at signals on…

The question is about simplicity of core implementation.

Easy debuging is different goal and you can have infinity of such additional goals, but solution obviously can't be equally simple at everything at the same time (because of the conflict of responsilities).

Re: Do the simplest thing that can possibly work (2004)

#39

Post by Xeoncross »

I wish I could convince product teams that the MVP is often just a single feature. Like a search bar + results page.

Something we can ship very fast, then we can add the banners, tracking for marketing, account creation, user ratings, community forums, results commenting and sharing, image carousels and a mobile app with push notifications that the results changed. You know, the regular MVP stuff.

So many people think agile means waterfall using sprints.

Re: Do the simplest thing that can possibly work (2004)

#40

Post by layer8 »

deathanatos wrote: post #34

Then launch that MVP into production, and never be given an ounce of time by your PM to fix any of the shortcomings that you thought were not part of "Do the Simplest Thing". Iterate on that principle for new features, too: what's the simplest way to get this new feature out? And this one? And then find yourself surrounded by tech debt an a system that was cobbled together, not designed.

I think “simplest” needs to be applied to the whole system, not just to the change at hand. If you keep the system overall as simple as what could possibly work overall, you’re probably already reducing tech debt. Tech debt usually implies that things are getting unnecessarily complicated (accidental vs. essential complexity).
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