I think "big" and "weak" are poor terms as they're vague. I think the real principle he's describing is something more like "context-free knowledge/rules are mo

I think "big" and "weak" are poor terms as they're vague. I think the real principle he's describing is something more like "context-free knowledge/rules are more flexible and useful". The less context you have to consider when using an abstraction or making a decision, the simpler and more general it is. Like his example of "no drinking", there are no contexts in which he allows himself to drink, so it's simple and can deployed in any situation. In the reader/writer interfaces, there is only a single requirement for reading or writing, the byte array.