However, I have started thinking that instead of ‘simple’ we might use ‘understandable’. When we promote optimizing for ‘understandability’ we circumvent that ‘simplicity’ is not understood the same way by everyone.
Software described as simple is often interpreted as software with a small amount of features, of limited use. Which is not necessarily a bad characteristic but it is not the association we are looking for in the context of code structure. And of course there is the confusion with easy. Or worse, simple can be seen as a synonym for dimwitted.
I find that the term ‘understandable’ actually captures everything expressed in this article, because the reason we don’t want things to be intertwined or tied together is that that makes code harder to understand and thus to reason about.
This talk landed at a critical time in my career (about three years in) and changed how I approached software development in teams. Highly recommend it.
Very good to see this surfacing again!
However, I have started thinking that instead of ‘simple’ we might use ‘understandable’. When we promote optimizing for ‘understandability’ we circumvent that ‘simplicity’ is not understood the same way by everyone.
Software described as simple is often interpreted as software with a small amount of features, of limited use. Which is not necessarily a bad characteristic but it is not the association we are looking for in the context of code structure. And of course there is the confusion with easy. Or worse, simple can be seen as a synonym for dimwitted.
I find that the term ‘understandable’ actually captures everything expressed in this article, because the reason we don’t want things to be intertwined or tied together is that that makes code harder to understand and thus to reason about.
This talk landed at a critical time in my career (about three years in) and changed how I approached software development in teams. Highly recommend it.