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.
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
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...). 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.
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.
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.
"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.
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.