

Jack Dorsey (Square/Twitter): “It’s Really Complex To Make Something Simple.” - cwan
http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/11/jack-dorsey-charlie-rose/

======
wccrawford
One of the hardest things I've found is putting limits on things and getting
others to understand that they are better than not having limits. If you're
your own boss, it's pretty easy to dictate these things, but if you have to
answer to others... Ugh.

From a programmer's point of voice, one of the best things about (sane) limits
is that it's much, much easier to program for. Non-programmers tend to think
that not having limits would be easier, but that's rarely the case.

From a user's point of view, limits help them make decisions faster. You
aren't going to post a recipe on Twitter. You're going to use it for 1 thing:
Quick status updates to your friends. It isn't an address book or a calendar
or a webpage host. It could be, but they wisely chose not to be.

------
srean
There are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to make it so
simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is to make
it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. The first method is
far more difficult. -- Tony Hoare

------
j_baker
"Easy reading is damn hard writing."

-Nathaniel Hawthorne

~~~
gruseom
Clever and true, but no 19th century American writer would ever have written
in that way. Even Mark Twain, surely the closest in spirit to such a style,
was an order of magnitude more grandiloquent than that in his published
writing. And don't forget that "damn" was a swear word then
([http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=damn&year_sta...](http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=damn&year_start=1700&year_end=2000&corpus=0&smoothing=3)).
No, this is very much a 20th century aphorism. A quick look at Wikiquote
reveals that the earliest validated citation is... Maya Angelou! In an
interview from 1989. But they trace it back to Sheridan (1819):

    
    
      You write with ease, to show your breeding,
      But easy writing's curst hard reading.
    

Now here's how Americans really wrote in the 19th century (chosen at random
from Hawthorne, <http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Nathaniel_Hawthorne>):

 _There is a fatality, a feeling so irresistible and inevitable that it has
the force of doom, which almost invariably compels human beings to linger
around and haunt, ghostlike, the spot where some great and marked event has
given the color to their lifetime; and still the more irresistibly, the darker
the tinge that saddens it._

Rather different! I can't resist another:

 _The aspect of the venerable mansion has always affected me like a human
countenance, bearing the traces not merely of outward storm and sunshine, but
expressive also, of the long lapse of mortal life, and accompanying
vicissitudes that have passed within._

~~~
j_baker
Thanks. It did seem rather odd. Regardless, the sentiment is true. :-)

------
hoag
Couldn't agree more: that's been the driving force behind our new startup, and
our greatest challenge by far, i.e., how to keep it as simple as practicable.

------
cgrubb
If you fail tell your audience you don't have the time to be brief.

~~~
Umalu
"I have made it longer because I have not had time to make it shorter." ("Je
N'ai fait celle-ci plus longue que parceque je n'ai pas eu le loisir de la
faire plus courte.") -- Blaise Pascal.

------
borism
why not post original interview (including transcript, copy-pasted verbatim by
TC):

<http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/11404>

what's with this TC/AOL loyalty on HN? I think those two outlets are
loathsome.

~~~
Charuru
Well the formatting on the transcript for the official site is pretty
disgusting.

