3 ms·

"Keep it simple" as their first bullet point. I wonder who has ever had as a goal to make complicated software from the outset.

by jordigh 11y ago

adamrt 11y ago
Probably not many, but stating simplicity as your primary (or at least first) goal is a statement and reminder of priorities.
swsieber 11y ago
Your second sentence is a red herring that misses the point of that goal. Of course nobody has that goal (hopefully). But when people don't have that goal, complexity tends to creep in. Simplicity rarely happens by chance in large software.
- jordigh 11y ago
  Every time I've seen people have the simplicity goal from the outset, they inevitably have to at some point abandon it or their simple software gets replaced by software that has additional complexity. It often happens that the complex replacement then again grows too complex, and someone comes along with a simpler solution and the cycle repeats indefinitely. Firefox was supposed to be a simpler Mozilla, and when it got too complex, Chrome came out. I wouldn't be surprised that now that both of them are too complex, in a few more years someone comes out with a browser that is simpler than both of them and is intended to replace them both. Software development, in a very essentialist sense, is nothing but complexity management. Trying to never have any complexity is a naïve view of what software is.
  - vezzy-fnord 11y ago
    End users don't want simplicity, they want ease of use. Simple beautiful software is out there aplenty with diverse features, you just have to desire to use it.
    - Nomentatus 11y ago
      They don't want simplicity until the app crashes. They don't want simplicity until their supposedly compatible older programs don't run. They don't want simplicity until a security breach takes out their business. They don't want simplicity until their custom software "can't be made portable, realistically. It'll all have to be rewritten." They don't want simplicity until the program's behavior changes, and it's not at all clear why, or how to recover. They don't want simplicity until they've lost or overwritten data for no reason that can be discovered. In other words, it's not the falling that kills ya, it's hitting the ground.
  - semi-extrinsic 11y ago
    http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/Z/Zawinskis-Law.html http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/Z/Zawinskis-Law.html
  - Nomentatus 11y ago
    Very interesting take on things. From this point of view the virtue of the New Jersey Way is that they shorten this cycle, keeping things from getting way out of the ordinary f*ed up before the cycle restarts - after all, why wait 'till your car skids out and crashes before you replace your bald tires; that sort of thing.
vezzy-fnord 11y ago
It's one thing to have the intent. It's wholly another to actually execute it like suckless and co. do.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
agumonkey 11y ago
Maybe the term is now bloated but there was a time where complex and large was desired.
vegabook 11y ago
It starts out simple. Then gets copied. Competition brings feature wars. Features become bloat. Simplicity becomes attractive again.
rakoo 11y ago
From this point of view I don't think the opposite of "simple" is "complicated" but rather "full-featured". Softwares who try to follow the KISS philosophy often implement the usual 80% of functionalities that take 20% of the time, and leave the rest to other projects.
Nomentatus 11y ago
"Nobody in Hollywood ever sets out to make a bad movie." Often said in that industry, and technically/semantically true - just highly misleading and a thin excuse. A whole lot of people in Hollywood are pretty much indifferent to quality as opposed to flash. What they are, is highly focused on the marketing and star-vehicle issues which will determine their paychecks (at least in the short term.) The result is still all too predictable, and lamentable. They set out to do a great many things - it's just that making a really fine movie that people will want to watch twenty years from now wasn't one of them. Almost all programmers like to solve problems. It's why they took the job. But very few programmers really enjoy to re-solving problems, only better. The results of the latter activity aren't exactly highly visible, so the rewards aren't as obvious. Narcissists don't actively try to do the job badly or to cause future problems, this is just an inevitable and profound side effect of their relentless focus on getting superficially good-looking results now. Their indifference - even to human life - is not praiseworthy, or the absence of a flaw.

"Keep it simple" as their first bullet point. I wonder who has ever had as a goal to make complicated software from the outset.

by jordigh 11y ago

"Keep it simple" as their first bullet point. I wonder who has ever had as a goal to make complicated software from the outset.

adamrt 11y ago

Probably not many, but stating simplicity as your primary (or at least first) goal is a statement and reminder of priorities.

swsieber 11y ago

Your second sentence is a red herring that misses the point of that goal. Of course nobody has that goal (hopefully). But when people don't have that goal, complexity tends to creep in. Simplicity rarely happens by chance in large software.

jordigh 11y ago
Every time I've seen people have the simplicity goal from the outset, they inevitably have to at some point abandon it or their simple software gets replaced by software that has additional complexity. It often happens that the complex replacement then again grows too complex, and someone comes along with a simpler solution and the cycle repeats indefinitely. Firefox was supposed to be a simpler Mozilla, and when it got too complex, Chrome came out. I wouldn't be surprised that now that both of them are too complex, in a few more years someone comes out with a browser that is simpler than both of them and is intended to replace them both. Software development, in a very essentialist sense, is nothing but complexity management. Trying to never have any complexity is a naïve view of what software is.
- vezzy-fnord 11y ago
  End users don't want simplicity, they want ease of use. Simple beautiful software is out there aplenty with diverse features, you just have to desire to use it.
  - Nomentatus 11y ago
    They don't want simplicity until the app crashes. They don't want simplicity until their supposedly compatible older programs don't run. They don't want simplicity until a security breach takes out their business. They don't want simplicity until their custom software "can't be made portable, realistically. It'll all have to be rewritten." They don't want simplicity until the program's behavior changes, and it's not at all clear why, or how to recover. They don't want simplicity until they've lost or overwritten data for no reason that can be discovered. In other words, it's not the falling that kills ya, it's hitting the ground.
- semi-extrinsic 11y ago
  http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/Z/Zawinskis-Law.html http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/Z/Zawinskis-Law.html
- Nomentatus 11y ago
  Very interesting take on things. From this point of view the virtue of the New Jersey Way is that they shorten this cycle, keeping things from getting way out of the ordinary f*ed up before the cycle restarts - after all, why wait 'till your car skids out and crashes before you replace your bald tires; that sort of thing.

vezzy-fnord 11y ago

It's one thing to have the intent. It's wholly another to actually execute it like suckless and co. do.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

agumonkey 11y ago

Maybe the term is now bloated but there was a time where complex and large was desired.

vegabook 11y ago

It starts out simple. Then gets copied. Competition brings feature wars. Features become bloat. Simplicity becomes attractive again.

rakoo 11y ago

From this point of view I don't think the opposite of "simple" is "complicated" but rather "full-featured". Softwares who try to follow the KISS philosophy often implement the usual 80% of functionalities that take 20% of the time, and leave the rest to other projects.

Nomentatus 11y ago

"Nobody in Hollywood ever sets out to make a bad movie." Often said in that industry, and technically/semantically true - just highly misleading and a thin excuse. A whole lot of people in Hollywood are pretty much indifferent to quality as opposed to flash. What they are, is highly focused on the marketing and star-vehicle issues which will determine their paychecks (at least in the short term.) The result is still all too predictable, and lamentable. They set out to do a great many things - it's just that making a really fine movie that people will want to watch twenty years from now wasn't one of them. Almost all programmers like to solve problems. It's why they took the job. But very few programmers really enjoy to re-solving problems, only better. The results of the latter activity aren't exactly highly visible, so the rewards aren't as obvious. Narcissists don't actively try to do the job badly or to cause future problems, this is just an inevitable and profound side effect of their relentless focus on getting superficially good-looking results now. Their indifference - even to human life - is not praiseworthy, or the absence of a flaw.