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Works today, but tomorrow the complex solution does not do what is needed and presents a barrier to delivering what is needed now. In a static environment you a

by sgt101 8y ago

Works today, but tomorrow the complex solution does not do what is needed and presents a barrier to delivering what is needed now. In a static environment you are right, but static environments are vanishingly rare for software, by definition (because with stops after one iteration!)

kibwen 8y ago
What is this comment trying to say? That a simple program that doesn't work today is better than a complex program that works today, but that might not work in some nebulous future? Not all complexity is reducible. The point of software is to work correctly, not to satisfy the author's aesthetic notions, which is what most of the modern hype over simplicity boils down to.
- mlthoughts2018 8y ago
  I think you missed the parent comment’s point, which is that a highly complex implementation might have problems very similar to overfitting in statistics. Simplicity in some sense means “room to expand to handle future unseen cases.” If an implementation is very complex, chances are it has some assumptions baked in somewhere and when it hits the wrong corner case or a new requirement is added, it manifests not as some mere refactoring annoyance, but as a complete meltdown where the system is revealed to be incapable entirely, and has to undergo major delays due to huge refactoring that can lead to ripple effect problems in other parts of the system. In that sense, simplicity is like insurance against the future, and so at any given moment you don’t solely care about the system’s total correctness or performance right now but also you care about some diversification benefit of investing in simplicity too. Very much like how you don’t choose stocks based solely on what will have the highest expected return right now, but instead you also incorporate some notion of risk management when optimizing.
- sgt101 8y ago
  What I am saying is that a ball of mud that passes all tests is worse than something clear that fails corner cases (genuine corner cases) because sorting that out can be done. Whereas the ball of mud will definitely fail in the future and when it does nothing will help you apart from a complete rebuild. "It passes the tests" simply doesn't cut it.

by sgt101 8y ago

kibwen 8y ago

What is this comment trying to say? That a simple program that doesn't work today is better than a complex program that works today, but that might not work in some nebulous future? Not all complexity is reducible. The point of software is to work correctly, not to satisfy the author's aesthetic notions, which is what most of the modern hype over simplicity boils down to.

mlthoughts2018 8y ago
I think you missed the parent comment’s point, which is that a highly complex implementation might have problems very similar to overfitting in statistics. Simplicity in some sense means “room to expand to handle future unseen cases.” If an implementation is very complex, chances are it has some assumptions baked in somewhere and when it hits the wrong corner case or a new requirement is added, it manifests not as some mere refactoring annoyance, but as a complete meltdown where the system is revealed to be incapable entirely, and has to undergo major delays due to huge refactoring that can lead to ripple effect problems in other parts of the system. In that sense, simplicity is like insurance against the future, and so at any given moment you don’t solely care about the system’s total correctness or performance right now but also you care about some diversification benefit of investing in simplicity too. Very much like how you don’t choose stocks based solely on what will have the highest expected return right now, but instead you also incorporate some notion of risk management when optimizing.
sgt101 8y ago
What I am saying is that a ball of mud that passes all tests is worse than something clear that fails corner cases (genuine corner cases) because sorting that out can be done. Whereas the ball of mud will definitely fail in the future and when it does nothing will help you apart from a complete rebuild. "It passes the tests" simply doesn't cut it.