4 ms·

You're not being dismissed. You're being corrected. The GP, along with many other people, are trying to get software professionals to standardize on a definit

You're not being dismissed. You're being corrected. The GP, along with many other people, are trying to get software professionals to standardize on a definition of simple that means something like "composed of a single element; not compound" or "easy to reason about". Under such a standard, it makes no sense to talk about "simple to use" vs "simple to understand". You can talk about "easy to use" vs "easy to understand". The latter might mean "simple". But "simple" never means the former. And you never say it's "simple to X" for any value of X. Under such a standard. The degree to which people are converging on this standard in actuality is not clear to me.

beaconstudios 8y ago
no-one told me about this standard when I entered the industry. If it comes from some blog post that I haven't read, how am I meant to know that some small selection of developers prefer "simple/easy" as a dichotomy? It's not a correction if it's just a different opinion.
- jstimpfle 8y ago
  There is a very popular talk by Rich Hickey (creator of Clojure), "Simple vs easy". Maybe that was what popularized the distinction among many programmers. It's really not an arbitrary definition if you think about it etymologically. Very freely sim-ple is "unfolded" (c.f. pliers, plier qc). Whereas com-plex is "folded together". "Easy" relates more to a state of ignorance. It's about the user of the thing, not about the thing itself. (NB I'm just making this up. I'm not a linguist so I might be wrong).
  - beaconstudios 8y ago
    it makes sense as a distinction and I'll likely use it going forwards. The only thing I objected to was the idea that this distinction is something I should already know as a programmer. I guess it comes down to a case of separate bubbles/backgrounds, as I've never heard the distinction before in my time in industry and I'd guess it's considered standard jargon within your environment?
    - jstimpfle 8y ago
      I would assume most HN folks have heard of Rich Hickey and his talks. Surely not all of them have. Learning never ends :-)
      - beaconstudios 8y ago
        I knew about him, but haven't seen / heard of his talks.

beaconstudios 8y ago

no-one told me about this standard when I entered the industry. If it comes from some blog post that I haven't read, how am I meant to know that some small selection of developers prefer "simple/easy" as a dichotomy? It's not a correction if it's just a different opinion.

jstimpfle 8y ago
There is a very popular talk by Rich Hickey (creator of Clojure), "Simple vs easy". Maybe that was what popularized the distinction among many programmers. It's really not an arbitrary definition if you think about it etymologically. Very freely sim-ple is "unfolded" (c.f. pliers, plier qc). Whereas com-plex is "folded together". "Easy" relates more to a state of ignorance. It's about the user of the thing, not about the thing itself. (NB I'm just making this up. I'm not a linguist so I might be wrong).
- beaconstudios 8y ago
  it makes sense as a distinction and I'll likely use it going forwards. The only thing I objected to was the idea that this distinction is something I should already know as a programmer. I guess it comes down to a case of separate bubbles/backgrounds, as I've never heard the distinction before in my time in industry and I'd guess it's considered standard jargon within your environment?
  - jstimpfle 8y ago
    I would assume most HN folks have heard of Rich Hickey and his talks. Surely not all of them have. Learning never ends :-)
    - beaconstudios 8y ago
      I knew about him, but haven't seen / heard of his talks.