

The enemy of progress in tech is complexity - ebenezer
http://scripting.com/stories/2010/10/17/howToDoAStandardPart3.html

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bediger
Very good! I'll buy it. But then I'm a NetBSD refugee.

Should we all scrap the infernally complex Win32 interface? Or PHP? I guess
that since DCE and CORBA have gone by the wayside, all we need to do is wait
by the river long enough, and the body of SOAP will come floating by?

~~~
davewiner
The old ways don't go away just cause new simpler ones gained traction.
Somewhere someone is still programming in FORTRAN and COBOL. Win32 will
probably survive all of us. And the body of SOAP may float by us on the river,
but it's a long way before it's out to sea. :-)

~~~
gaius
You really think J2EE and other modern stuff is "simpler" than COBOL? Have you
ever seen COBOL code?

~~~
davewiner
Not any more but it probably was when it started. Cruft accumulates over time.
And yes, not only have I seen COBOL, I even have written COBOL. :-(

------
devmonk
Totally agree with this.

Simplicity is the reason that higher-level languages and lightweight process
for project/task management, design/development should win.

So what's the problem in general? Well, let's take it a step further and find
out.

It could easily be argued that the same technique of simplification can and
should be applied to other areas of our lives. Federal and state laws, rules,
and regulations in the U.S. are extremely complex when looked at as a whole,
so let's start there. But that is a huge chunk, so let's focus even more:
Since tax laws are especially burdensome, and it would seem simple enough to
try to simplify them. There have been efforts by many to push for the "Fair
Tax", "Flat Tax", etc. Why hasn't everyone jumped aboard this train?

These efforts fail because:

1\. The people pushing to re-engineer the system would end up causing so much
change that many people would lose their jobs (accountants, lawyers, the IRS,
etc.) and there would be mass turmoil on top of that prolonged unemployment.

2\. The same large accounting industry, lawyers, etc. have a good bit of
lobbying power. Threatening these people's livelihoods will produce even more
serious action if they ever thought it would really happen. Right now they are
just on-guard. Imagine what it would look like if they were cornered.

How all of this applies to tech:

Along with complexity comes process and resources to deal with that
complexity. If you let things get complex and they stay that way long enough,
you are going to have trouble simplifying. Simplification will almost
certainly have detractors come out of the woodwork pushing for the old way of
doing things, and if you still follow through, it may end up with a number of
people getting let go.

Whole industries have sprung up around ISO, CMM, etc. certifications, UML
tools, etc. Banks are afraid of giving up the waterfall design/development
teams, even if they have other teams doing "agile". Even "agile" has their
folks pushing scrum certification, etc.

The way out of this I think is to start over.

Start your own company and make your own way. This is the only way to break
the cycle.

By the same token, government needs to be reinvented if it is to ever be
simplified. But, neither revolt nor destruction is the answer. People make fun
of people that try to start their own governments within the geographical
bounds of other governments, but they are on the right track at least, even if
they are a little (or a lot) crazy. But really, there is almost no place on
Earth to start anew.

So, we need to colonize space. Earth is just going to continue to get more and
more screwed up, and the human race needs some chances to start over and
simplify.

~~~
ramanujan
We don't have to wait for outer space:

<http://seasteading.org>

They are staffed by former Googlers with $500k from Peter Thiel, and have
already put some technically sophisticated plans online:

<http://seasteading.org/seastead.org/book_beta/index.html>

~~~
devmonk
Sounds similar to this movie plot. And, yes, it's 30,000 not 20,000. I missed
that distinction when browsing Netflix. Stream it- I wouldn't waste the
mailer:

<http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1056026/>

