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Something I have noticed across the technical/non-technical divide is that the concepts of simplicity and difficulty are easily conflated. Often non-technical

by jpgvm 4y ago

Something I have noticed across the technical/non-technical divide is that the concepts of simplicity and difficulty are easily conflated. Often non-technical folk are only interested in "easy" solutions. Technical folks are more inclined to pick simple solutions. The perception of simple being hard mostly comes from simple often eliding things like a GUI which is inherently complex and overkill for a good number of tasks. However users have been conditioned to think mouse == easy and keyboard == hard.

ashton314 4y ago
Reminds me of Rich Hickey’s “Simple made Easy” talk. Quote: > So the first word is simple. And the roots of this word are sim and plex, and that means one fold or one braid or twist. … > The other word we frequently use interchangeably with simple is the word easy. … [T]hat is from the Latin word that is the root of adjacent, which means to lie near and to be nearby. And the opposite is hard. Of course, the root of hard has nothing to do with lying near. Engineers like simple because it’s often easier to understand and debug. Non-techies like simple things too if they’re easy to pick up. But if it’s not easy to intuit just by looking at something, then complex solutions start becoming easier because they’re more ready at hand.
j16sdiz 4y ago
Tech folks tends to over engineering the solution: https://xkcd.com/1319/ https://xkcd.com/1319/
thewebcount 4y ago
I guess it depends on your ideas of simple vs. easy. I find a GUI simple because I can explore it to see the options if I’m a little lost. The Unix command line is exceedingly difficult to get useful information out of if you don’t already know how it works. Need help? Don’t type “help” because it will just stare back at you blankly. The commands themselves are not easy. Each one takes flags, mostly a single letter, and the same flags have different meanings in different commands. Cmd-P is print in every goddamned GUI app I’ve ever used. Cmd-Q is quit. Cmd-C is copy. That’s simple to me. Having to memorize a bunch of flags with conflicting meanings or key commands to change modes in an app is not simple to me.

by jpgvm 4y ago

ashton314 4y ago

Reminds me of Rich Hickey’s “Simple made Easy” talk. Quote: > So the first word is simple. And the roots of this word are sim and plex, and that means one fold or one braid or twist. … > The other word we frequently use interchangeably with simple is the word easy. … [T]hat is from the Latin word that is the root of adjacent, which means to lie near and to be nearby. And the opposite is hard. Of course, the root of hard has nothing to do with lying near. Engineers like simple because it’s often easier to understand and debug. Non-techies like simple things too if they’re easy to pick up. But if it’s not easy to intuit just by looking at something, then complex solutions start becoming easier because they’re more ready at hand.

j16sdiz 4y ago

Tech folks tends to over engineering the solution: https://xkcd.com/1319/ https://xkcd.com/1319/

thewebcount 4y ago

I guess it depends on your ideas of simple vs. easy. I find a GUI simple because I can explore it to see the options if I’m a little lost. The Unix command line is exceedingly difficult to get useful information out of if you don’t already know how it works. Need help? Don’t type “help” because it will just stare back at you blankly. The commands themselves are not easy. Each one takes flags, mostly a single letter, and the same flags have different meanings in different commands. Cmd-P is print in every goddamned GUI app I’ve ever used. Cmd-Q is quit. Cmd-C is copy. That’s simple to me. Having to memorize a bunch of flags with conflicting meanings or key commands to change modes in an app is not simple to me.