The enemy of progress in tech is complexity

http://scripting.com/stories/2010/10/17/howToDoAStandardPart3.html

by ebenezer • 16 years ago

10 7 16 years ago

bediger• 16 years ago

Very good! I'll buy it. But then I'm a NetBSD refugee.

Should we all scrap the infernally complex Win32 interface? Or PHP? I guess that since DCE and CORBA have gone by the wayside, all we need to do is wait by the river long enough, and the body of SOAP will come floating by?

davewiner2• 16 years ago

The old ways don't go away just cause new simpler ones gained traction. Somewhere someone is still programming in FORTRAN and COBOL. Win32 will probably survive all of us. And the body of SOAP may float by us on the river, but it's a long way before it's out to sea. :-)

gaius• 16 years ago

You really think J2EE and other modern stuff is "simpler" than COBOL? Have you ever seen COBOL code?

devmonk2• 16 years ago

Totally agree with this.

Simplicity is the reason that higher-level languages and lightweight process for project/task management, design/development should win.

So what's the problem in general? Well, let's take it a step further and find out.

It could easily be argued that the same technique of simplification can and should be applied to other areas of our lives. Federal and state laws, rules, and regulations in the U.S. are extremely complex when looked at as a whole, so let's start there. But that is a huge chunk, so let's focus even more: Since tax laws are especially burdensome, and it would seem simple enough to try to simplify them. There have been efforts by many to push for the "Fair Tax", "Flat Tax", etc. Why hasn't everyone jumped aboard this train?

These efforts fail because:

1. The people pushing to re-engineer the system would end up causing so much change that many people would lose their jobs (accountants, lawyers, the IRS, etc.) and there would be mass turmoil on top of that prolonged unemployment.

2. The same large accounting industry, lawyers, etc. have a good bit of lobbying power. Threatening these people's livelihoods will produce even more serious action if they ever thought it would really happen. Right now they are just on-guard. Imagine what it would look like if they were cornered.

How all of this applies to tech:

Along with complexity comes process and resources to deal with that complexity. If you let things get complex and they stay that way long enough, you are going to have trouble simplifying. Simplification will almost certainly have detractors come out of the woodwork pushing for the old way of doing things, and if you still follow through, it may end up with a number of people getting let go.

Whole industries have sprung up around ISO, CMM, etc. certifications, UML tools, etc. Banks are afraid of giving up the waterfall design/development teams, even if they have other teams doing "agile". Even "agile" has their folks pushing scrum certification, etc.

The way out of this I think is to start over.

Start your own company and make your own way. This is the only way to break the cycle.

By the same token, government needs to be reinvented if it is to ever be simplified. But, neither revolt nor destruction is the answer. People make fun of people that try to start their own governments within the geographical bounds of other governments, but they are on the right track at least, even if they are a little (or a lot) crazy. But really, there is almost no place on Earth to start anew.

So, we need to colonize space. Earth is just going to continue to get more and more screwed up, and the human race needs some chances to start over and simplify.

ramanujan• 16 years ago

We don't have to wait for outer space:

http://seasteading.org

They are staffed by former Googlers with $500k from Peter Thiel, and have already put some technically sophisticated plans online:

http://seasteading.org/seastead.org/book_beta/index.html

devmonk2• 16 years ago

Sounds similar to this movie plot. And, yes, it's 30,000 not 20,000. I missed that distinction when browsing Netflix. Stream it- I wouldn't waste the mailer:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1056026/

The enemy of progress in tech is complexity

Related Stories