[blondin]

wouldn't say simple is the opposite of complex though? especially when talking about software systems or other systems in general. what i am thinking is that some complex systems can be made of very simple components.

the best example is our complex brain being made of simpler components working together. maybe the opposite of complex is chaotic? i don't know...

[ajdegol]

Simple systems can indeed be made of complex components; however it is a measure of interconnectedness. The key concept is that we can only hold a finite amount of complexity in our heads at any one time, and so if we can minimise that we can be more efficient and effective.

The analogy is a lego castle vs a wool castle. A lego brick is very simple and contained, and from this you can build wonderful structures; in addition if you wish to change out a portion it is easy to do because changing on part of the system (i.e. implementation) doesn't affect the rest so long as the contract between components is maintained.

Contrasting: should you pull on a thread in a wool castle it will affect other parts of the castle. A lot of software is like this, which makes it very hard to reason about.

[hyperpallium]

"Interconnectedness" is also a measure of resistence to hierarchical decomposition (or factoring ax+bx -> (a+b)x); irreducable complexity.

One technique is redefining the problem, to smaller or bigger:

Work on only part of a problem, a subset, leaving something out. e.g. git's data model does not represent renames as first class constucts, enabling it to be disproportionately simpler.

Expand the problem, a superset, to integrate lower or higher level or associated parts that aren't usually included. Previously scattered commonalities may then appear, enabling decomposition.

[roenxi]

And the Lego analogy works in particularly nicely considering just how much effort, precision and design work needs to go in to making the blocks simple [0]. This is a nice analogy for how keeping software components simple and making them interface cleanly is a difficult task.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lego#Design

[mnsc]

> maybe the opposite of complex is chaotic?

Cynefin would agree!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynefin_framework

[cuddlecake]

I imagine that a software system that is made of simple components can still be complex. So I'd still go for simple vs complex

[nkrisc]

A very big object can be made of lots of small objects, but that doesn't mean big isn't the opposite of small.