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Low simplicity and High simplicity

Jan 11th, 2007 by Phil Dawes

Michael Feathers makes, I think, an important step forward in assisting fruitful programming language debates by providing new vocabulary to talk about simplicity.
He adds another dimension (literally!) by introducing a continuum between ‘low simplicity’ and ‘high simplicity’.

Posted in General, workfriendly, programming | Comments

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    I think it would also help the discussion to define simplicity in terms of not only low/high and also context.

    For example, is it simple in terms of writting the original code, or in terms of someone else trying to understand and maintain it? The two are not necessarily the same.

    It also makes a difference in terms of whether the code is standalone (e.g. the miles/kilometer example in the original article) of if it is working with another construct/language. For example, code (e.g. in PHP) used to interact with a database (e.g. MySQL). If the underlying concepts and constructs of the code language reflect that of the database, it is much easier to understand than if they are different.

    My point is that the discussion of low/high simplicity is more meaningful within a context.
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