4 ms·

The website itself is definitely an application of the "Do The Simplest Thing That Could Possibly Work" principal. It's pretty much just plain text. Nonethele

The website itself is definitely an application of the "Do The Simplest Thing That Could Possibly Work" principal. It's pretty much just plain text. Nonetheless I think it has a fairly good argument, though it could lead to woefully inane mistakes because of not thinking things through sufficiently.

jeffcoat 17y ago
That website is the Very First Wiki. And indeed, Ward Cunningham was going for simplicity. http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WikiDesignPrinciples http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WikiDesignPrinciples
- NathanKP 17y ago
  I must say that it is cool in a retro sort of way, but I still like Wikipedia better. I mean the fact the page titles tend to have no spaces, and instead have the first letter of each word capitalized such as: ExampleTitleInTheVeryFirstWiki That's interesting from a programming point of view, but I'd rather see clear, clean titles. Hence my judgement that is is cool in a retro, back to the early 90's sort of way.
  - sjs 17y ago
    There is enough timeless content there to attract interested people anyway. Despite its retro look the site is still active to a degree, though I'm not sure how much original content there is. Many of the popular topics have been beaten to death and the conclusion, as always, is that the best solution or method depends on the problem. The arguments can be very engaging, but it goes the other way too.
  - blasdel 17y ago
    MediaWiki is a crap example -- its titles must start with a capital letter
  - ZeroGravitas 17y ago
    It was the simplest thing that could possibly work, and it did.
stcredzero 17y ago
But if you can develop rapidly, you can quickly refactor and add what you need. As a result, you spend all of your time building or morphing into what you need, and zero time building what you don't. And believe me, building what you don't really need is a big problem in most software development.

jeffcoat 17y ago

That website is the Very First Wiki. And indeed, Ward Cunningham was going for simplicity. http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WikiDesignPrinciples http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WikiDesignPrinciples

NathanKP 17y ago
I must say that it is cool in a retro sort of way, but I still like Wikipedia better. I mean the fact the page titles tend to have no spaces, and instead have the first letter of each word capitalized such as: ExampleTitleInTheVeryFirstWiki That's interesting from a programming point of view, but I'd rather see clear, clean titles. Hence my judgement that is is cool in a retro, back to the early 90's sort of way.
- sjs 17y ago
  There is enough timeless content there to attract interested people anyway. Despite its retro look the site is still active to a degree, though I'm not sure how much original content there is. Many of the popular topics have been beaten to death and the conclusion, as always, is that the best solution or method depends on the problem. The arguments can be very engaging, but it goes the other way too.
- blasdel 17y ago
  MediaWiki is a crap example -- its titles must start with a capital letter
- ZeroGravitas 17y ago
  It was the simplest thing that could possibly work, and it did.

stcredzero 17y ago

But if you can develop rapidly, you can quickly refactor and add what you need. As a result, you spend all of your time building or morphing into what you need, and zero time building what you don't. And believe me, building what you don't really need is a big problem in most software development.