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One of my favorite quotes from Rich Hickey: "Simplicity is hard work. But, there's a huge payoff. The person who has a genuinely simpler system - a system made
by mattjaynes 13y ago
One of my favorite quotes from Rich Hickey:
"Simplicity is hard work. But, there's a huge payoff. The person who has a genuinely simpler system - a system made out of genuinely simple parts, is going to be able to affect the greatest change with the least work. He's going to kick your ass. He's gonna spend more time simplifying things up front and in the long haul he's gonna wipe the plate with you because he'll have that ability to change things when you're struggling to push elephants around."
http://devopsu.com/blog/simplicity-is-key/ http://devopsu.com/blog/simplicity-is-key/
- tedunangst 13y agoFun nit: this is one of the times when effect is the correct word to use.
- derleth 13y agoDepends on the variety of English. What you said is true for the prestige dialect, certainly.
- derleth 13y agoDownvoting linguistic knowledge doesn't make it any less true.
- mtinkerhess 13y agoI'd be curious to see an example of a dialect in which "to affect change" is more correct than "to effect change"?
- tedunangst 13y agoSome people seem to like pushing descriptivism too far. "Somebody said it, therefore it's correct."
- hdevalence 13y agoWhat basis for judgements of correctness would you suggest, if not facts about how English speakers speak English?
- mtinkerhess 13y agoHow about facts about what nearly all English speakers agree is the correct usage?
- Kaizyn 13y agoFor correctness, it should be how educated speakers speak English. In this case, I would also settle for "how published authors write English."
- tedunangst 13y agoA majority, or at least a substantial minority? (Don't interpret common mistakes as proof of correctness. Most (all?) people who spell 'lose' as 'loose' will at least acknowledge their mistake when it's pointed it out. Nobody thinks 'loose' is actually correct in their "not prestige" dialect.)
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- FkZ 13y agoNeither one is more correct in isolation as they mean different things.
- Kaizyn 13y agoThere ain't no such thing as a prestige dialect in English. In all of them, "affect change" is just plain wrong.
- derleth 13y ago> There ain't no such thing as a prestige dialect in English. I sincerely hope this is sarcasm. > In all of them, "affect change" is just plain wrong. Cite?
- Kaizyn 13y agoHello derleth: "Effect. As noun, means result; as verb, means to bring about, accomplish (not to be confused with affect, which means "to influence")." http://www.bartleby.com/141/strunk3.html http://www.bartleby.com/141/strunk3.html Affect vs. Effect: http://www.dartmouth.edu/~sullivan/CommonWritingErrors.html#Affect_vs._Effect_ http://www.dartmouth.edu/~sullivan/CommonWritingErrors.html#...
- derleth 13y agoThose sources don't define correctness. Especially Strunk and White, which is pretty well debunked at this point: http://www.languagehat.com/archives/003463.php http://www.languagehat.com/archives/003463.php
- Kaizyn 13y agoSorry, derleth. It's not a matter of someone defining correct usage. It's simply a matter of looking at the dictionary definitions of the words 'affect' and 'effect'. Affect simply means to influence while effect means to bring about.
- Kaizyn 13y agoGrammatically, ted is right on this one.
- mythz 13y agoExactly this.
- chongli 13y agoSimplicity is hard work. But, there's a huge payoff. I hate to be cynical in a thread about a very optimistic and insightful speaker but I think that it will always be the case that people will trade off easy work early on for more pain late in the game. This is called hyperbolic discounting and it's an extremely common cognitive bias in humans. The only way we'll overcome this is through extensive education and a dramatic change in culture (particularly office culture).
- aero142 13y agoI'll ask a question. Have you seen a correlation between companies that have simpler code bases and are more successful in the long run? Personally, I've never seen it. The most successful companies have horrible code bases that are eventually replaced by well written modular architectures if the become successful. I personally love the idea and value of simple code but I can't say I've seen a lot of evidence for it.
- hcarvalhoalves 13y agoThat depends on whether this hypothetical codebase is an asset or a sunken cost.
- Kaizyn 13y agoAll code no matter how beautiful is a sunken cost.
- lifeisstillgood 13y agothat would be markets where the deciding factor is software. I suspect you are thinking of say windows where the quality of codebase was lesser factor than installed base etc I would suggest that web browsers is a good example - IE market share vs say Mozilla. other examples are Sage vs freeagnet ? hard to unpick market tactics and strategy from code - but it's hard to deny there is a link intuitively
- 13y ago
- shuzchen 13y agoMy favorite quote (from "Are We There Yet?") is "I'm just trying to program without going crazy".
- dominotw 13y agoVery nice quote. But I think I am having a hard time seeing the genius of it. There was voice in my head saying 'Duh..' as I finished reading it.
- fogus 13y agoDid anyone say that it was genius? Taking something that some people see as "duh" and phrasing it in such a way as to provide clarity is a valuable thing.
- babuskov 13y agoTrue if your product is a success. But if you're building 10 projects and only one of then succeeds, you just spent 9 times enormous amount of time you will never get back. One could argue that rewriting the successful one from scratch would still take less time than that.