Complexity
From EcoReality
Some years ago I spent a week giving an in-house program design course at a manufacturing company in the mid-west of the United States. On the Friday afternoon it was all over. The DP Manager, who had arranged the course and was paying for it out of his budget, asked me into his office.
"What do you think?" he asked. He was asking me to tell him my impression of his operation and his staff.
"Pretty good," I said. "You've got some good people there." Program design courses are hard work; I was very tired; and staff evaluation consultancy is charged extra. Anyway, I knew he really wanted me to tell me his own thoughts.
"What do you think of Fred?" he asked. "We all think Fred is brilliant."
"He's very clever," I said. "He's not very enthusiastic about methods, but he knows a lot about programming."
"Yes," said the DP Manager. He swiveled round in his chair to face a huge flowchart stuck to the wall: about five large sheets of line printer paper, maybe two hundred symbols, hundreds of connecting lines. "Fred did that. It's the build-up of gross pay for our weekly payroll. No one else except Fred understands it." His voice dropped a reverent hush. "Fred tells me that he's not sure he understands it himself."
"Terrific," I mumbled respectfully. I got the picture clearly. Fred as Frankenstein, Fred the brilliant creator of the uncontrollable monster flowchart. That matched my own impression of Fred very well. "But what about Jane?" I said. "I thought Jane was very good. She picked up the program ideas very fast."
"Yes," said the DP Manager. "Jane came to us with a great reputation. We thought she was going to be as brilliant as Fred. But she hasn't really proved herself yet. We've given her a few problems that we thought were going to be really tough, but when she finished, it turned out they weren't really difficult at all. Most of them turned out pretty simple. She hasn't really proved herself yet - if you see what I mean?"
I saw what he meant. -- Michael Jackson (Software Requirements & Specifications)
Everything should be as simple as possible, but no simpler. -- Albert Einstein
A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. -- John Gall (Systemantics)
A system tends to grow in terms of complexity rather than of simplification, until the resulting unreliability becomes intolerable. -- Tom Gibb
Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Some can avoid it. Geniuses remove it. -- Perlis’s Programming Proverb #58, SIGPLAN Notices, Sept. 1982
You know you have reached perfection of design not when you have nothing more to add, but when you have nothing more to take away. -- Antoine de'Exupery
