
Simplicity is hard to build... - gaika
http://twitter.com/sacca/statuses/860432283
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ojbyrne
I have my own more literary version (hat tip to Tolstoy). "Crappy websites are
all the same; great websites are each unique in their own way."

~~~
ii
I would say: "All good interfaces resemble one another, each crappy interface
is crappy in its own way."

~~~
ojbyrne
On the surface they may resemble each other, but the effort is always in the
little niggly details of error messages, page flow, arrangement of things on
the page. Whereas crappy interfaces are just CRUD.

~~~
nostrademons
But that's bastardizing the original Tolstoy quote, which IIRC was "Happy
families are all alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way", i.e.
success looks the same, but failure is widely varied.

</pedantic>

Applies to startups too. And oh look, there's a Wikipedia article on it too:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Karenina_principle>

~~~
ojbyrne
That page seems to be entirely one author's (Jared Diamond) twist on the
original phrase. There's nothing wrong with turning a phrase around - it's
akin to irony.

~~~
nostrademons
The page suggested that it was also used in statistics and ecology. I'd never
heard of it before I Googled to make sure I had the quote right, so I'm
basically taking Wikipidia's word for it (always a risky thing...)

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sofal
Why is complexity easier to charge for than simplicity? Is it because
consumers mistake accidental complexity with real complexity? Does simplicity
make a product or service appear of less worth?

~~~
mdasen
Because when people see complexity, they assume it was difficult to program.
When someone sees simplicity, they assume that's just how computers work. For
example, how does Google work? It's an incredibly complicated problem, but
Google puts a nice front-end on it that makes it all look like that's just how
computers work.

In my job capacity, I often have to create custom search applications. As a
whole of the project, this is given very little time and money. What is given
time and money are incredibly complex interfaces with lots of options. I have
to assume this is because a search interface often has one (or a small number)
of inputs (therefore is easy) while an interface dealing with categorization
on multiple facets, tags, etc. has lots of complexity (therefore being hard).

Simplicity is hard to charge for because it looks easy. When something looks
easy, we don't value it highly. Basically, we understand the work that went
into cludgy, complex interfaces because we see it. We* don't understand the
complexity of something simple like Google.

*The "we" is meant to be the public, not really people on news.yc.

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gibsonf1
This is true in architecture (building) as well. It's far easier to pile forms
together and not worry too much about how they integrate together. Well
designed plans are hard to find, but very easy to enjoy when you find them.
Radically harder is to integrate the entire work into a unified whole, which
is how architecture moves into the world of aesthetics. In the tech world,
Apple strives to make this same move - the results speak for themselves.

~~~
wallflower
"How Buildings Learn" by Stewart Brand. Highly, highly recommended book. It's
about buildings that can adapt because the architecture allows them to. I'd
read it again but my 2 loaned out copies have not been returned.

------
aston
Simplicity is really easy to charge for. Tons of people want to pay for
Dropbox because it makes getting files places easy when it wasn't before.

 _Simple_ , on the other hand, is very difficult to charge for. If you can't
demonstrate a substantial amount of added value, people will want it for free
or won't use it at all. And if you do try to charge, competitors will come in
and quickly replicate what you've got, but undercut you.

~~~
skmurphy
I agree with "simplicity is really easy to charge for." People will pay more
for a simple path to a result that they value. This makes your demo easier to
understand and actual time to adopt faster as well (fewer, easier to follow
steps).

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wallflower
This reminds me of the classic "Form and Function" ideal

> He admits that every stable object is really a “fiction” posited by the
> operations of imagination and sentiment. We always “bestow on the objects a
> greater regularity than what is observed in our mere perceptions”

<http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hume-aesthetics/>

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spinonethird
Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing left to add, but when there
is nothing left to remove. —Antoine de Saint-Exupery

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skmurphy
I think for most applications this isn't accurate. It is true that simplicity
is hard to achieve, but if you can deliver a compelling result without a lot
of setup or initialization (e.g. three month professional services engagement)
and without large changes in customer behaviour, you can capture much more of
the value you are creating for your customer. It's when they have to put their
best people on it for weeks to months to make it work (which they include in
the calculation of the total cost of acquisition and ownership) that you are
imposing additional costs that are subtracted from the value you create.

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bestes
I find this almost profound. Zen-like, even.

Google has been a comfort to me because the gap between simple interface and
complex back-end is so incredibly huge.

Their success reminds me every day that hard is not the same as impossible
when shooting for simplicity. And, when you achieve this (Google-like) level
of elegance and simplicity it can be orders of magnitude better (than a
complex solution).

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mynameishere
Sigh. Obviously, if you're working on a website that is just ludicrously
simple, you want to pretend that simplicity is difficult. Get behind the
search algorithms at google or the scheduler in Windows NT and tell us about
how "hard to build" simplicity is.

~~~
jraines
Pretty hard, right? Isn't that his point?

~~~
mynameishere
Three people have upmodded you, which means that there are at least three
people here incapable of reading and processing very simple sentences:

 _Complexity is easy to build_

That is what I am refering to. The search engine behind google and the
scheduler in NT are COMPLEX, and to suggest that they are EASY TO BUILD for
that reason is a suggestion of almost blinding stupidity.

~~~
jraines
He's saying simplicity FOR THE USER is tough to build. I'm sure even more so
when they are backed by complex logic that make them magic for the user.

Maybe you should work on your own reading comprehension skills before you go
insulting other people's.

~~~
mynameishere
It still doesn't make sense. To extend my example, the interface into all
search engines, google or otherwise, is naturally simple. The more complicated
interfaces, like that of clusty.com or a9.com, are surely not easier to
create.

~~~
mlinsey
Sure they are! Complicated interfaces make it easy to:

1 - avoid forcing yourself to really prioritize your feature set, something
that's really hard to do and requires really understanding your users.

2 - push a bunch of effort from you to the user.

For example, you cited A9.com. If I do a search on A9.com, the search results
window is split (by default) into two parts: one that lists web search results
and one that lists book search results. At least by default, it appears that
both sections are always there.

If I do a search on Google, than Google will usually only display web search
results, but if it senses I'm searching for something about a book (example:
do a search for "Charles Dickens"), you'll sometimes see some book results up
at the top.

Google's method of only showing you book results when it suspects you are
looking for something having to do with books is both much less complex for
the user and much more difficult to build.

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cpr
What's funny is that good is expressed in infinitely diverse ways, while evil
is pretty much expressed in a very narrow range. (Something of an obverse to
Tolstoy's observation.)

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mattmaroon
Is it ironic that I got the fail whale when I went there?

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axod
I don't think it's quite that binary in reality.

~~~
pchristensen
Reality rarely fits into 140 characters.

~~~
aasarava
That's often true, but the ability to express an idea succinctly can also be a
sign that the author has thought through the idea and his words very
carefully.

("I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time." Blaise
Pascal.)

~~~
pchristensen
Which I think this tweet did. It captured a whole lot of wisdom and experience
into a small package, but it didn't match every situation. Rules of thumb like
this one are usually like this.

------
lst
Simplicity is easy to build.

Simplicity _without_ _drawbacks_ is hard to build (to verify only in the long
term).

There has been found a term for that phenomenon: its spelling seems to be:
wisdom.

(They even wrote a book about it, the most printed -- yet less read book ever:
yes, _exactly_ _that_ one).

