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How would you propose achieving a middle ground? Anything in the middle will still have to have a lot of features, and once you have a lot of features, how do y
by skyfaller 6y ago
How would you propose achieving a middle ground? Anything in the middle will still have to have a lot of features, and once you have a lot of features, how do you hold the line and prevent people from adding more features until it is just the absurdly complex modern web-as-operating-system again?
The reason Gemini is so simple is not simply to keep it simple enough that anyone can write their own client or server, although that is certainly one goal. A big reason it is so simple is a general policy of rejecting new features, and that minimalism may be necessary to prevent scope creep.
- thrwaeasddsaf 6y agoIf you think scope creep is an inevitable consequence of not making a protocol non-extensible, I have a thousand RFCs to show you.. Really you just need to outline some goals and rules and have the right people at the top calling the shots. Plenty of things are designed and developed with a conservative mindset where adding new features has to be very carefully justified. I'd also like to point out that it's worthwhile to think of the complexity of all the systems you require, and not just one protocol/document format. Gemini may be simple, but when it is too simple, you will need a different protocol or format. So now you have two, with somewhat overlapping functionality that you can't merge if you insist on keeping everything absolutely minimalist. Only two isn't going to be enough.. so if you're willing to do what you do, complexity is inevitable, whether it is in a single protocol or spread across a clusterfuck of dozens of protocols. Again, it is good engineering and good abstraction to find a solution that gives a lot of bang for buck, i.e. is reasonably simple yet covers multiple bases.