In Software: Simplify, Simplify | Hacker News Reader

In Software: Simplify, Simplify

codeclimber.blogspot.com

26 pointseVizitei7 comments

Beware the "Analysis Paralysis" tarpit ...

Ever notice how every simple (simplistic) piece of advice that's obviously true has an equally simple (simplistic) piece of advice that's obviously true, and exactly opposite.

"He who hesitates is lost" vs "Look before you leap"

Yes, code should be simple, but sometimes it can only get that way after you've written the wrong version. Sometimes it's only then that you really understand the problem.

While reading all the lengths he was considering going to to make the thing blink, I just assumed an animated .gif was not an option. Seems pretty darn obvious.

"Seems" being the key word there. Its the same reason that sooo many people get screwed in the stockmarket. They look in the past and in retrospect, the great upheavals seem to obvious that they think that they can predict them and before they know it, they are down 50%. Same with great ideas. The concept of the wheel may seem simple to us now but I wonder how much thought it took to come up with it for the first time.

I don't think he's saying, in hindsight, after reading the whole article, that an animated GIF was obvious.

He's saying that he thought of the animated GIF option before coming to the end of the article, but that it was so obvious to him that he assumed the fact that the author had neglected it meant that it wasn't a possibility for technical reasons.

Precisely.

I just spent five days researching how to generate PDFs dynamically or alternatively how to fill PDF forms dynamically from a server-side script. Just so anyone who purchased a ticket to our concert can print it out themselves (the ticket will include a barcode which can be scanned using a mobile phone with Java and a camera).

Then it dawned on me that I could simply point them to a (HTML) page which they can print out. Believe me, I felt stupid.

(But at least I learned about PDF forms, (X)FDF, and JavaScript in PDFs. Oh well...)

It's easier to find the simpler solution after you implement the complex solution.

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