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Comment by mkleczek | Hacker News Reader

KISS is good... until it isn't.

At my work I struggle with the opposite: all problems are being squeezed into "let's put it into static JSON on the CDN" - which ends up with a complex custom JSON based language (schema) to support sharing information between apps, subsetting information (ie. search) etc - ie. implementing an ad-hoc one-file database. Ahh... and don't forget about complex CI/CD pipelines and Git setup that allow business users to manipulate data in these files.

I found "just use Postgres for everything" a much saner default in the end.

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That sounds like a PITA solution more than KISS. That said, I'd rather walk into that business and solve that problem, than walk into a business that is fully cloud serverless hooks all over the place.

So yes, Kiss is good until it isn't... because it wasn't kiss anymore. Moving to the postgres solution sounds like it's the new Kiss.

> fully cloud serverless hooks all over the place

I don't know how this will ever not be a complete maintenance hell. It is even far worse than the monolithic "I push every bit that needs to be pushed for the whole enterprise - Sync Tool".

I propose a new paradigm: microenterprises. We limit the scope of the responsibility of each monolithic enterprise Sync Tool to something more digestible by limiting the scope of the enterprise itself.

Best of both worlds.

> don’t forget about complex CI/CD ...

So it’s simple or complex because I got confused ;)

KISS is ALWAYS good. But simplicity doesn’t mean easy or naïve solutions. Naïve solutions get very complex since the initial input is low and they don’t cover edge cases by design making it tangled mess.

Simple solutions are often very difficult to create, require a lot of input to be simple, but they cover a lot of cases behind the curtains and are easy to describe.

Your “use Postgres” strategy is more KISS than doing complex mocking. Sure, initial effort is higher, but using well known, powerful yet ergonomic singular entity is as simple as one can get on some levels. It’s equivalent of “just use Excel for it”.

I agree with you, but I think tagline is misplaced.

The crazy habits proponent in your workplace is simply ahead of his time: there is the "SQLite for edge" vulgata now and he/she may skim some of the wheel reinvention and funny engineering problems with throwing around SQLite files, like in the good old Access days.

People should not cache something that changes very often.

"Make things as simple as possible, but not simpler." - Einstein (paraphrased)

The situation at your workplace isn't KISS. It's the opposite.

The fuller version of KISS is "keep it as simple as possible, but no simpler".

What is KISS? Apologies, I'm unfamiliar with some acronyms.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KISS_principle

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