00:00:00.070
I was always looking for the way to make people smile since we get hungry every day and have to cook every day. Even though cooking is fun, doing it every day makes it something we have to do. We want to inspire people to enjoy cooking more.
00:00:49.829
Hi, thanks very much for inviting me. I was told they always like to have someone who's really outside of the community, so that would be me. Apparently, my phone booth is parked outside. I'm here to talk about something that readily crosses languages: simplicity. I think simplicity is super important.
00:01:11.800
I'd like you to try to imagine a different word as the first word in this sentence. I don't think anything fits better than the word 'simplicity'. We're going to quickly talk about two words, mostly because they get conflated, and we need to stop doing that. The first word is 'simple', which means one fold, one braid, or twist. You can contrast this with 'complex', which means to combine many things or to twist two braids together.
00:01:39.250
Now, just like in English, we derive 'easier' in the sense of something lying nearby. If you think back to when it was hard to travel, having something nearby made it much easier. These are very different concepts when we talk about one fold or braid.
00:02:09.429
We need to move away from actually folding. We don't fold our software; we can't look at a particular piece of software or component in your software as fulfilling one role. It's about concepts like security, scalability, access, or calculations. I'd like to avoid getting fixated solely on the idea of 'one' because it doesn't mean you should only have one interface or class with only one operation.
00:03:08.790
The main thing that distinguishes simplicity from easiness is that simplicity is objective. We can look at specific things we do in software and consider how they may be twisted together. There's nothing subjective about it. In contrast, easiness is relative and is colored by your own experiences.
00:03:39.030
When we talk about easiness, we have to make this distinction. Being nearby or easy doesn’t mean that something is objectively simple. It’s about being part of my toolkit. It's also about familiarity: is this something I already know? If something looks similar to what I already know, then it's easier to grasp.
00:04:25.260
There's a third characteristic that's harder to achieve but is much more important: the task should be near your capabilities. You can have something installed that may look exactly like something you know but may do something completely different, which complicates understanding. Thus, complexity can tax our brains when we try to manipulate these systems.
00:05:09.719
We tend to avoid the topic of complexity because it’s embarrassing. We work in a mental field where we hate to admit, 'This is too hard for me.' There’s a limit to how much complexity we can actually handle. If something is far from our capabilities, it will never become easy to manage, yet we may need to accomplish it.
00:06:06.140
What we really need to care about is how complexity influences our ability to change or fix our systems. One major distinction is that simplicity is about pursuing opportunities. Simplicity grants you the freedom to adapt and change your designs. I will argue that architectural agility, which comes from building a fundamentally simple system, dominates all other forms of agility.
00:06:52.130
If your software reaches a certain size, you will be dominated by complexity. Regardless of the processes you apply, you are going to be limited. People even with the best practices face concrete walls regarding what they can accomplish each week, and it's complexity that really stops them from innovating or making changes.
00:09:10.950
However, I don’t want to characterize simplicity solely as a defensive mechanism, something you use to ward off the complexity elephant. Simplicity actually buys you opportunities in your designs. It allows you to construct software architectures that can adapt and change more effectively.
00:09:49.560
I believe that a genuinely simple system gives you considerable changes with minimal work. You won't find yourself needing to rely heavily on complex elephants; instead, you'll have the ability to change things when needed. By simplifying, you can substitute, combine different parts easily to solve problems.
00:10:48.650
I think simplicity in design, not to be confused with making pretty interfaces, is about breaking things apart. A good designer takes complex tasks and breaks them into simple components. By doing this, genuine opportunities for change arise.
00:12:12.930
When you simplify your components, you reduce complexity, and thus you can produce more agile systems. You will find it easier to run different boxes or change components in your system without hassle.
00:12:29.700
Simplicity buys us ease and agility. If we've made a simple system, it allows us to substitute parts or take components of our software and change them if we need to without worrying about the complexities of the overall software architecture.
00:13:15.300
I want to modernize an old adage: simplicity has nothing to do with Lisp directly, but we often become fixated on how development works for us. We strive for a seamless experience, that everything falls into place without effort. Yet we really need to consider our software's architecture more carefully.
00:13:42.360
Imagine if the Foo Fighters only focused on what was easy for them, choosing to avoid challenges. They would not have produced great music. There's a conflict between programmers and the software today based on personal convenience that compromises quality.
00:14:28.669
We need to focus on our creations and their quality instead of continuously seeking ease for ourselves. Our goal needs to be to understand what we create, why we create it, and how it can be maintained.
00:15:11.960
It's critical to take the time to evaluate our choices in development tools and processes, ensuring they are enhancing the product and not just making it easier for us in the moment. The 'hairball' analogy represents complexity—a tangled mess that increases difficulty in managing our systems.
00:16:27.780
We must be cautious of how these design decisions can lead to increasingly complex software. Complexity, derived from intertwining elements, ultimately undermines our ability to create reliable software that we can easily change and enhance.
00:17:23.440
So how can we make things easy, and how do we ensure we're not overlooking the complexities we've inherited? Making something familiar like a new toolkit can significantly help, and we can choose to learn these new elements rather than sticking solely to what we know.
00:18:27.900
If we encounter something complex, we must find ways to simplify our implementation of these systems, keeping in mind that true ease is found in pursuing simplicity in every sense. We can utilize radically simpler languages and tools to achieve similar results with less complexity.
00:19:41.480
We have a variety of choices to make in our programming practices. We might choose stateful programs centered around objects instead of writing simple functions to manipulate values, which easily test and maintain. Each time we incorporate complex syntax or complex data structures, we risk complicating our software unnecessarily.
00:21:51.590
We often overlook the complexities added through conditionals, which could be better replaced with rules or simple data manipulations. Thus, complexity is our constant battle as we strive to maintain clarity in our systems.
00:23:19.110
To wrap things up, simplicity is a conscious choice. It's not something we should expect to flow naturally from any process or tool. We need to actively pursue simplification because that will make all our tasks easier in the long run.
00:24:13.040
By improving our sensitivity to issues of complexity, such as the entanglement of components in our software, we can ensure we’re choosing simple solutions instead of unnecessarily complicating any given task.
00:25:43.940
Our ultimate goal is to achieve simplicity, which grants us opportunities for change and innovation. Simplicity leads to real agility, enabling us to move from one task to the next efficiently. Please, go out there and create something simple.