4 ms·

My takeaway was that if we conflate the two, we tend to use familiar (easy) tools to solve our problems, but that learning a new tool (hard) could result in a s

My takeaway was that if we conflate the two, we tend to use familiar (easy) tools to solve our problems, but that learning a new tool (hard) could result in a simpler solution. E.G, passing something to a legacy program in a language I'm unfamiliar with from a program I wrote in a familiar language is easier than implementing my solution in the legacy language, but it's not simpler. The 'relative vs absolute' seems like a heuristic to distinguish the two. Writing a solution in a different language is easier to me, but I can tell on an absolute level that there are more failure points to that approach.

hzhou321 7y ago
Thanks. I think I understand the background much better now. When we think easy, we always take the "my" and "now" perspective. When we think simple, we often take the wholesome point of view. Thus the need for differentiation.
- NoodleIncident 7y ago
  I might be wrong, but I think the word you meant by "wholesome" is actually "holistic"
  - hzhou321 7y ago
    You are right, I just grabbed the words by the sound of it. A better word is subjective and objective. Easy is a subjective word, while simple is an objective one.
zmmmmm 7y ago
Nice explanation. Python is a great example of this IHMO. It is a real struggle to get the Python programmers on my team to use any other language than Python. Why? Because it's easy for them. But the solutions they create with it are highly suboptimal. They could be far more robust and expressed much more concisely and directly in other languages with more powerful type systems and better support for eg: functional concepts. But they actually really think that because Python is easy for them, that it's "simple". It's not: it's incredibly complex.
- SuoDuanDao 7y ago
  Haha, I was thinking of that as I wrote it. My first language was C++ back in the day, then I dabbled in various languages for a while, and finally really dove into Python because there was a project I couldn't figure out how to write any other way. If I had to work with one of the languages I learned earlier, my first instinct would now be to write the solution in Python and pass it to the legacy program. Perfect example of what the speaker is warning of.

hzhou321 7y ago

Thanks. I think I understand the background much better now. When we think easy, we always take the "my" and "now" perspective. When we think simple, we often take the wholesome point of view. Thus the need for differentiation.

NoodleIncident 7y ago
I might be wrong, but I think the word you meant by "wholesome" is actually "holistic"
- hzhou321 7y ago
  You are right, I just grabbed the words by the sound of it. A better word is subjective and objective. Easy is a subjective word, while simple is an objective one.

zmmmmm 7y ago

Nice explanation. Python is a great example of this IHMO. It is a real struggle to get the Python programmers on my team to use any other language than Python. Why? Because it's easy for them. But the solutions they create with it are highly suboptimal. They could be far more robust and expressed much more concisely and directly in other languages with more powerful type systems and better support for eg: functional concepts. But they actually really think that because Python is easy for them, that it's "simple". It's not: it's incredibly complex.

SuoDuanDao 7y ago
Haha, I was thinking of that as I wrote it. My first language was C++ back in the day, then I dabbled in various languages for a while, and finally really dove into Python because there was a project I couldn't figure out how to write any other way. If I had to work with one of the languages I learned earlier, my first instinct would now be to write the solution in Python and pass it to the legacy program. Perfect example of what the speaker is warning of.