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I feel like it's a bit backwards. The software complexity increases because people lack the patience to tackle the existing complexity, or learn why things are

by js8 4y ago

I feel like it's a bit backwards. The software complexity increases because people lack the patience to tackle the existing complexity, or learn why things are complex, and prefer to believe that it can be simple, or get job done somehow, and in order to do that, they (somewhat egoistically) go their own way, which actually - barring occasional good insight - mostly increases the total complexity. The same goes for societies. If people have more autonomy (like, not have external pressure to be productive), they might be more willing to contribute to the society as a whole, to fix it, and also take a more long-term view of the future. IME, in established open source software, there is less churn and accidental complexity. Complexity is also often the result of in-fighting, which again, is the symptom of a society where the trust is low. Though I am not sure, honestly, if there is a reliable way to increase the trust inside society rather than the actual collapse. That paradoxically often leads to increased cooperation.

atoav 4y ago
I believe many software developers often tend to write software which has precisely the segree of complexity they can just barely manage. There is not many people who have the guts to build a simple straightforward step for step script. Software developers that fall into love with the beauty of their own abstractions can be a real problem.
- commandlinefan 4y ago
  > precisely the segree of complexity they can just barely manage "Everyone knows that debugging is twice as hard as writing a program in the first place. So if you're as clever as you can be when you write it, how will you ever debug it?" -- Brian Kernighan
- aylmao 4y ago
  +1, plus I'll add that I think there's organizational factors too. Overall, organizations incentivize complexity, and I'd like to point out three ways in which they do: - One is that new systems tend to be rewarded, because people and organizations tend to associate "new" with "better". Related, people and organizations tend to associate high complexity systems with "hard work", and the transactional view of work tends to err on the side of rewarding "hard work". - Next is that complexity digs a moat of job security. I don't think this is a bad thing, job security is good. Again, unfortunately the transactional view of work can easily devolve into "we can pay someone less to do what you do" and building a complex system is a way to counter that. - Lastly, a story. At some point I worked on a team that quadrupled in size to tackle huge project, only to then fall into a sort of "identity crisis" because the project was done and there wasn't enough meaningful work afterwards for everyone. This insane growth, in my opinion, was also fueled by egos. The overarching team manager seemed pretty adamant in finding more people to hire, but I don't necessarily remember us feeling understaffed. They clearly expressed they wanted to use all the headcount the company had authorized, and the primary reason they always mentioned was that we'd "lose it if we didn't use it by the end of the year". This led to an "induced demand"-like situation. By the end of it, we had a huge team, the bigger meta-project was done, and everyone needed to find the next thing to work on and build. I saw plenty of proposals for solutions looking for a problem, and worked on some myself too before leaving.
- wtetzner 4y ago
  > There is not many people who have the guts to build a simple straightforward step for step script I don't think it's that easy. Building simple software is very hard, and often takes several iterations to ensure you even understand the problem. Most developers are under time pressure, and stop as soon as there's a working solution, even if it's more complex than it should be.
commandlinefan 4y ago
> they (somewhat egoistically) go their own way, That's not necessarily all ego talking. If you have a task to accomplish and you're going to need to spend a week looking at it just to get a handle on how to start getting it done the simplest overall way possible, your boss is just going to insist you do it the "quick and dirty" way "this one time" (every time). As Dilbert says, "our boss can't judge the quality of our work, but he knows when it's late". This is an inviolate law of software development: quick always beats good. Get on board, or you'll be replaced by somebody who is.
CRConrad 4y ago
> The software complexity increases because people lack the patience to tackle the existing complexity, or learn why things are complex, and prefer to believe that it can be simple, or get job done somehow, and in order to do that, they (somewhat egoistically) go their own way, which actually - barring occasional good insight - mostly increases the total complexity. Easy to implement for me --> but not so good for overall structural simplicity --> worse for everyone in the long run, kind of thing?

by js8 4y ago

atoav 4y ago

I believe many software developers often tend to write software which has precisely the segree of complexity they can just barely manage. There is not many people who have the guts to build a simple straightforward step for step script. Software developers that fall into love with the beauty of their own abstractions can be a real problem.

commandlinefan 4y ago
> precisely the segree of complexity they can just barely manage "Everyone knows that debugging is twice as hard as writing a program in the first place. So if you're as clever as you can be when you write it, how will you ever debug it?" -- Brian Kernighan
aylmao 4y ago
+1, plus I'll add that I think there's organizational factors too. Overall, organizations incentivize complexity, and I'd like to point out three ways in which they do: - One is that new systems tend to be rewarded, because people and organizations tend to associate "new" with "better". Related, people and organizations tend to associate high complexity systems with "hard work", and the transactional view of work tends to err on the side of rewarding "hard work". - Next is that complexity digs a moat of job security. I don't think this is a bad thing, job security is good. Again, unfortunately the transactional view of work can easily devolve into "we can pay someone less to do what you do" and building a complex system is a way to counter that. - Lastly, a story. At some point I worked on a team that quadrupled in size to tackle huge project, only to then fall into a sort of "identity crisis" because the project was done and there wasn't enough meaningful work afterwards for everyone. This insane growth, in my opinion, was also fueled by egos. The overarching team manager seemed pretty adamant in finding more people to hire, but I don't necessarily remember us feeling understaffed. They clearly expressed they wanted to use all the headcount the company had authorized, and the primary reason they always mentioned was that we'd "lose it if we didn't use it by the end of the year". This led to an "induced demand"-like situation. By the end of it, we had a huge team, the bigger meta-project was done, and everyone needed to find the next thing to work on and build. I saw plenty of proposals for solutions looking for a problem, and worked on some myself too before leaving.
wtetzner 4y ago
> There is not many people who have the guts to build a simple straightforward step for step script I don't think it's that easy. Building simple software is very hard, and often takes several iterations to ensure you even understand the problem. Most developers are under time pressure, and stop as soon as there's a working solution, even if it's more complex than it should be.

commandlinefan 4y ago

> they (somewhat egoistically) go their own way, That's not necessarily all ego talking. If you have a task to accomplish and you're going to need to spend a week looking at it just to get a handle on how to start getting it done the simplest overall way possible, your boss is just going to insist you do it the "quick and dirty" way "this one time" (every time). As Dilbert says, "our boss can't judge the quality of our work, but he knows when it's late". This is an inviolate law of software development: quick always beats good. Get on board, or you'll be replaced by somebody who is.

CRConrad 4y ago

> The software complexity increases because people lack the patience to tackle the existing complexity, or learn why things are complex, and prefer to believe that it can be simple, or get job done somehow, and in order to do that, they (somewhat egoistically) go their own way, which actually - barring occasional good insight - mostly increases the total complexity. Easy to implement for me --> but not so good for overall structural simplicity --> worse for everyone in the long run, kind of thing?