Comment by dgb23
5 years ago
The core idea is to separate ease from simplicity and to talk about the implicit trade-offs of adhering to one over the other.
He claims that certain (often popular) tools and practices adhere to ease rather than simplicity, which introduces accidental complexity. And he introduces term „to complect“ which is now widely used in the Clojure community.
Many of the concepts and comparisons he talks about can be found in the design of Clojure and Datomic.
What is simplicity and how it differs from ease? I haven’t got a chance watching the talk yet.
Simplicity is described as being "disentangled" or the opposite of complexity.
I personally often picture complexity as a graph of nodes and edges:
- The more edges you add, the more complex the thing it describes.
- The more rules you can deduce about the graph (for example "it is a unidirectional circle-like") such as the flow of the edges, counting etc. the less complex it is.
The imagery in the talk describes it similar: Complexity is more knotted and interwoven. Simplicity is more straight-forward, clear and composable.
Ease is described as something being "near", also in the dimension of time. Something you already know or can learn/do quickly.
The talk goes on describing how simplicity requires up-front investment and time to achieve and also how ease and simplicity sometimes overlap and when they are at odds.