On Simplicity
April 8, 2008 · by Scott Fradkin
I briefly spoke with a colleague of mine today and he was checking his messages on his new work cellphone. It was one of those new-fangled Blackberry devices. He was telling me about some of the things it can do. In jest, I pulled out my year-and-a-half old flip phone. No camera, no keyboard, I don’t even know how to download a ringtone for it. I just want my phone to be a phone. That’s probably too much to ask as the cellphone industry is going further and further towards creating devices that can do everything. I already have devices that can do the other things: a digital camera and a laptop. I like having the ability to leave things home when I don’t want to be bothered. I just don’t feel the need to be constantly connected.
There was a time when I’d get excited about the newest techno-gadget on the market. Miniaturization and packing in features are keys to getting people excited about products (my cellphone runs my website, has an 8MP camera, and does my laundry… it’s the size of a credit card!). But, nowadays, I’d rather have simplicity. I like my iPod because it plays music really well (though I can’t stand iTunes, fortunately I can use gtkpod) not because it can also bake bread.
I like to extend the thoughts of simplicity to my programming. It’s sometimes cool to come up with the entire kitchen along with the sink in a couple of lines of code, but I’ve found that it’s better to just keep it simple and clean. It usually works out better if the code is easy to understand even if it takes 20 lines to create that kitchen sink.
But then again… sometimes IT IS cool to throw in that kitchen with 2 extra lines of elegant code.
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