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> Does simple have to equal easy?

laughs in Simple Mail Transfer Protocol

laughs even harder in lightweight directory access protocol

Any protocol with the words "lightweight" or "simple" in the name, is not. Looking at you, SNMP.

The protocols themselves are lightweight or simple, but using them may not be.

Imagine that your protocol for choosing dinner with your SO is:

You: What would you like:

Them: I don't care.

There, simple! Getting some useful information out of that is an exercise left for the reader.

Wonderful analogy - thank you for that.

Well, it used to be. Before they discovered headers...

if we're talking about it in the context of widespread user adoption then yes. At least it's a large part of it.

It's not really helpful when people try to describe IRC as easy simply because it resembles text based paradigms that developers are familiar with.

I think the missing subtlety here is simple design vs. simple to use or simple to learn. Vim is very simple in design, but not at all simple to learn.