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Comment by tacon | Hacker News Reader

Is the software engineering profession doomed to lose its memory every generation? The premise of this post is ridiculous:

>The single most important quality in a piece of software is simplicity.

How panglossian, imagining the best of all possible worlds. Well, the world is intrinsically complex, as Fred Brooks explained in his No Silver Bullet essay from 1986[0].

"The complexity of software is an essential property, not an accidental one."

Sure, there is accidental complexity in most software problems, that can be tackled with skill and experience, and maybe reduced to zero. But then you are left with the essential complexity of the world. And you are done reducing the complexity; you can only manage it from then on. The world is very, very complex and it is a pipe dream to imagine that we can eliminate its complexity just by some bold engineering.

[0] http://worrydream.com/refs/Brooks-NoSilverBullet.pdf

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Anyone who has spent any time developing anything but a tiny software system knows that the biggest impediment to productivity (feature delivery, bug fixing, etc) is the complexity of the system at hand.

In a sense, this post is simply stating the obvious.

The biggest differentiator of skilled software practitioners is the ability to construct simple systems.

To call this claim panglossian or meaningless is to hold the philistinic line that this skill set doesn't matter, that any complex system is effectively the same as any ol' simple one -- don't worry about cultivating the skill, it doesn't matter anyway...

But simplicity is the single most important thing that matters in any maintaining system other than one-off scripts, hack jobs, etc. -- It's absolute torture to collaborate on a software project with anyone who rejects this premise.

You are making the common mistake of confounding essential complexity with accidental complexity. One you are stuck managing and one you can eliminate with skill. The world isn't getting less complex just because you work harder on your software.

The world, from software’s perspective at least, isn’t growing in complexity. What leads one to that?

The world growing more complex from the software's perspective.

And by that I mean, it has to account for more scenarios or do additional things... unless your software is growing in complexity while you're only removing features...

Bugs in software come from thinking we're simplifying the world in one way though the program, while in reality it receives a slightly different picture.

A well-built software system doesn't have to grow in complexity over time. More features does not equal more complex in the true sense of Simple.

Faulty data models and system designs -- that aren't fixed -- lead to ever-increasing complexity. But that is the fault of the data model/designer.

I.e., there is a way to build (and grow) systems w/o linear increase in complexity -- but it takes a particular rare skill set.

Also it’s not about working harder; it’s about building smarter—building simple systems—which absolutely makes your world simpler. ‘Essential complexity’ is what sophomoric developers decry when they are unable to architect well—and are unwilling to do the hard work it takes to learn to architect well.

> The biggest differentiator of skilled software practitioners is the ability to construct simple systems.

I would say it's to construct simple enough systems, and the hallmark of skill is a developer's ability to define enough.

I believe you're conflating simplicity/complexity with flexibility.

_One_ hallmark of developer ability is the discretion/wisdom/experience to know how flexible to make the thing. (How to prioritize and limit feature-creep, etc.)

But this is different than Simplicity. A general purpose programming language or database -- highly flexible/generic systems -- for example, can be built well/simple. But so can highly _specific_ systems.

In both cases though, one can build something that is decoupled and manipulable or one can build something that is coupled and rigid -- and the ability to do so is a function of skill set _not intrinsically_ a function of time. In other words, a skilled developer doesn't have to "take time" to deliver a Simple capability.

Sometimes you just want a hammer, not a swiss army knife.

And sometimes it is good to have a replaceable head on the hammer.

Yes! And the property of Simplicity is orthogonal to whether or not you chose to make the Knife or the Hammer.

A Hammer's construction can be Simple. A Knife's construction can be Simple. Or not.

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