Exercises in Simplicity

The more time I spent on software development, the more I come to apprec= iate simplicity. When software is buggy, slow or lacking features, that is = annoying. But as long as it is simple, I can still understand the limitatio= ns and work around them or even fix them. When something goes wrong in a co= mplex program, it is often not worth spending the huge amount of time neces= sary to even understand what is happening. Instead of learning about the pr= oblem your software solves, you are drowned in build tools, pre- and post-p= rocessors, too many layers of abstractions, many different APIs and huge am= ounts of dependencies.

Dealing with simpler software is more satisfying for me and provides a f= aster way to deep understanding. I want to write a few posts about the diff= erent ways I approach simple software. Sometimes, I want to replace a progr= am I use by something simpler, in other cases I just want to try something = out in order to learn how much of the complexity of common solutions is rea= lly necessary.

Guidelines

Simplicity is more important than features.
Usability must not suffer too much.
If I start with something minimal, some growth over time is ok. The imp= ortant thing is a high ratio between benefit and increase of complexity.

Exercises

This web site itself<= /li>
Vim instead of IDE (see my vim config)
Use suckless = software on my desktop
Hacking on a minimal markd= own-like parser

Inspiration

Quotes

Controlling complexity is the essence of computer programming.

-- Brian Kernighan

Simplicity is prerequisite for reliability.

-- Edsger W. Dijkstra

A program is like a poem: you cannot write a poem without writing it. Ye= t people talk about programming as if it were a production process and meas= ure "programmer productivity" in terms of "number of lines of code produced= ". In so doing they book that number on the wrong side of the ledger: We sh= ould always refer to "the number of lines of code spent".

-- Edsger W. Dijkstra

Written on 2020-04-19. Last updated on 2021-01-06.