One of my favorite quotes from Rich Hickey: "Simplicity is hard work. But, there's a huge payoff. The person who has a genuinely simpler system - a system made out of genuinely simple parts, is going to be able to affect the greatest change with the least work. He's going to kick your ass. He's gonna spend more time simplifying things up front and in the long haul he's gonna wipe the plate with you because he'll have…
Very nice quote. But I think I am having a hard time seeing the genius of it. There was voice in my head saying 'Duh..' as I finished reading it.
Did anyone say that it was genius? Taking something that some people see as "duh" and phrasing it in such a way as to provide clarity is a valuable thing.
While I have much sympathy for Rich (way more than for Clojure), I find his talks to be extremely simple. He can talk hours about very basic and obvious things. Overall, at the end, I'm not getting much new from it.
Oh shit, I have learned a lot from Rich's talks... so your talks must be much more useful. Where can I find them? Please tell me you have some talks? You have such great ideas, or communicate such "extremely simple" ideas so well that others (or even you yourself) have recorded them for me to watch. No talks? So you keep this knowledge to yourself and shit all over a guy who shares his knowledge with a community?
Your comment is terrible. You shit on Rich, you shit on Clojure, and say nothing other than you're so superior that you get nothing from anything Rich says. Fuck you (yes, that's not subtle, but your comment is passive-aggressive bullshit or perhaps you lack the ability to clearly state WHY you do not think a talk is useful).
Simplicity is hard work. But, there's a huge payoff. I hate to be cynical in a thread about a very optimistic and insightful speaker but I think that it will always be the case that people will trade off easy work early on for more pain late in the game. This is called hyperbolic discounting and it's an extremely common cognitive bias in humans. The only way we'll overcome this is through extensive education and a dr…
I'll ask a question. Have you seen a correlation between companies that have simpler code bases and are more successful in the long run? Personally, I've never seen it. The most successful companies have horrible code bases that are eventually replaced by well written modular architectures if the become successful. I personally love the idea and value of simple code but I can't say I've seen a lot of evidence for it.
That depends on whether this hypothetical codebase is an asset or a sunken cost.
While I have much sympathy for Rich (way more than for Clojure), I find his talks to be extremely simple. He can talk hours about very basic and obvious things. Overall, at the end, I'm not getting much new from it.
Oh shit, I have learned a lot from Rich's talks... so your talks must be much more useful. Where can I find them? Please tell me you have some talks? You have such great ideas, or communicate such "extremely simple" ideas so well that others (or even you yourself) have recorded them for me to watch. No talks? So you keep this knowledge to yourself and shit all over a guy who shares his knowledge with a community? You…
I'm going to reply to myself to clarify my harsh words. It is very easy to say something sucks. Windows sucks. Linux sucks. Lisp sucks. Apple Sucks. Google Sucks. It doesn't mean anything to say it. It is not useful to say something sucks, you cannot fix "sucks". Saying what is wrong with something is useful. Saying Rich's talks are "simple" is something, except most people don't seem to agree, so it would be much more useful to cite the things you know beyond the "simple" things Rich has talked about... "Rich is ok, he says simple things, but read X, or watch Y" is useful. I may disagree with you but at least I have something to investigate. In a better mood this probably would have been my first post, but HN seems to be about shitting on stuff these days so I guess I just went with that.
I'll ask a question. Have you seen a correlation between companies that have simpler code bases and are more successful in the long run? Personally, I've never seen it. The most successful companies have horrible code bases that are eventually replaced by well written modular architectures if the become successful. I personally love the idea and value of simple code but I can't say I've seen a lot of evidence for it.
That depends on whether this hypothetical codebase is an asset or a sunken cost.
All code no matter how beautiful is a sunken cost.
One of my favorite quotes from Rich Hickey: "Simplicity is hard work. But, there's a huge payoff. The person who has a genuinely simpler system - a system made out of genuinely simple parts, is going to be able to affect the greatest change with the least work. He's going to kick your ass. He's gonna spend more time simplifying things up front and in the long haul he's gonna wipe the plate with you because he'll have…
Fun nit: this is one of the times when effect is the correct word to use.