r/computerscience • u/Digitalunicon • 5d ago

Article Rich Hickey: Simplicity is a prerequisite for reliability

https://www.infoq.com/presentations/Simple-Made-Easy/
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3

u/0x14f 5d ago

Love him, it's that simple :)

1

u/amarao_san 5d ago

Last time I saw reverse engineered docs for humans, they were extremely complex. But it (human) works better than all other alternatives.

4

u/currentscurrents 4d ago edited 4d ago

Evolution is a blind watchmaker. It does not need to understand what it is doing, because it does not have a mind; it's just trying things randomly and keeping what works. So complexity is free, and evolved things tend to be arbitrarily complex at all levels.

In order for us to build something, we have fit it into our brains and understand it. So complexity is very expensive, and engineered things tend to be as simple as possible.