4 ms·

Yes, yes, yes, and thrice more yes. We embrace complexity at our peril. Dullness is a virtue.

• arethuza 13y ago
  "Dullness is a virtue" It's not as simple as that though - it all depends on the context of the project. Sometimes it is perfectly OK to go crazy and use bleeding edge technology other times that would be daft - it all depends what you are trying to achieve mixed in, as the article says, with a heavy dose of judgement.
  • cmdkeen 13y ago
    It's about how you use bleeding edge technology though, especially after playtime is over and you've established it does what you want. All too often the engineering of things like abstracting the bleeding edge tech, or documenting what is going on gets forgotten. Then some other poor soul is left to pick up the pieces when said bleeding edge tech released a breaking API change.
• mbrock 13y ago
  I think one of the big valuable traits of a good programmer is a real fear of complexity. But I don't think the biggest problem is the complexity that comes from "rockstars" and over engineering. I think it's a way bigger problem that complexity tends to grow uncontrollably as features are added and bugs fixed. Especially when the domain is poorly understood and when the team isn't focused on keeping a coherent and simple system. This kind of creeping complexity isn't introduced by mavericks because it's fun. It arises because of a conservative tendency to never throw anything out, to avoid refactoring, to be afraid of changes and simplifications. And also because of simple incompetence in design. Special cases multiply, no fruitful abstractions are introduced, the team's language is confused.