More simplicity

After my last post on simplicity I received an email from an old Teknekron/Tibco colleague Steve Wilhem who made a couple of great points that should be shared. I have para-phrased his email so any errors in interpretation are mine.

The first was around refactoring and how to achieve simplicity (specifically in a framework) the need to constantly refactor, do not expect to get it right the first time but keep evolving it. The other was more subtle and I thought most important. Do not try and solve all possible problems - leave the system open enough such that the last ten percent or so can be done by the user of the system. I think this is key as this is typically where we add complexity - trying to solve all the weird edge conditions we can possibly dream up. Let's assume our users are smart and give them the hooks to solve the problem in the way they see fit. Moves any complexity to specific applications rather than the infrastructure where it does not belong. Thanks Steve great suggestions.