

Ward Cunningham: The Simplest Thing that Could Possibly Work - ynd
http://www.artima.com/intv/simplest.html

======
ynd
_I think that that's a breakthrough, because you are always taught to do as
much as you can. Always put checks in. Always look for exceptions. Always
handle the most general case. Always give the user the best advice. Always
print a meaningful error message. Always this. Always that. You have so many
things in the background that you're supposed to do, there's no room left to
think. I say, forget all that and ask yourself, "What's the simplest thing
that could possibly work?"_

This habit of trying to do too much makes me inefficient sometimes. I aim for
quality and in the end I just get nothing - but a headache.

~~~
mlLK
Your comment reminded me of this experiment where two groups of elementary
students were asked to create a bowl for art class. [or vase or something] (I
can't recall the specific object of the experiment)

The first group was prompted to create one bowl with quality in mind. The
second group was asked to create a finite number of bowls, for this case lets
say 10 bowls, disregarding the quality of each bowl. In the end, the second
group's 10th bowl turned out better from an aesthetic standpoint than the
first group's single bow.

Qualitative measurements are tricky, which is why I have a hard time listening
[or believing] to any expert from any school that constitutes as a `social
science`

~~~
eru
One hopes for the advent of quantitative social sciences. Hey, even the
biologists are starting to employ math. (They call it systems biology.)

See for example "Can a Biologist Fix a Radio?"
([http://protein.bio.msu.ru/biokhimiya/contents/v69/pdf/bcm_14...](http://protein.bio.msu.ru/biokhimiya/contents/v69/pdf/bcm_1403.pdf))

------
RiderOfGiraffes
All on one page: <http://www.artima.com/intv/simplestP.html>

~~~
known
Thank you.

------
coconutrandom

      ...mere act of writing it organized our thoughts
    

So true, I just applied that yesterday.

------
stcredzero
_I actually enjoy complexity that's empowering. If it challenges me, the
complexity is very pleasant. But sometimes I must deal with complexity that's
disempowering. The effort I invest to understand that complexity is tedious
work. It doesn't add anything to my abilities._

All those who design and maintain programming languages, libraries, and
frameworks, heed this man's words!

