[JadeNB]

> There's real skill in creating simple solutions to complex problems.

Not entirely facetiously, I think that, for engineers, there's real skill in creating simple solutions to simple problems—not, for example, finding the general instance of the problem and solving that, when the problem is unlikely to recur and crafting the perfect general solution delays delivery on what's actually in front of you.

(I know Perl's not fashionable any more, but I've always liked its design philosophy of "make easy things easy, and hard things possible." It seems like a slogan that can be adaptable to how to solve problems, though I'm not sure of the absolutely perfect analogue. Hmm, maybe I'm trying to solve the general instance of a problem ….)

[fiddlerwoaroof]

I actually think this is the opposite of the case, for some definition of “generic”: the more generic problem has fewer possible solutions (there is only one pure function of type x=>x) so, if you hit on the right general problem to solve, your code will almost always be simpler. The problem is this is one of those “$1 to solve the problem/$99 to know which problem to solve” situations.

[JadeNB]

> I actually think this is the opposite of the case, for some definition of “generic”: the more generic problem has fewer possible solutions (there is only one pure function of type x=>x) so, if you hit on the right general problem to solve, your code will almost always be simpler. The problem is this is one of those “$1 to solve the problem/$99 to know which problem to solve” situations.

This is true, but I think also illustrates the phenomenon. It's tempting not to solve the specific problem in front of you, because a more general problem might be easier and more elegant to solve—and this mindset can easily lead one into, at worst, never solving the real problem; or, at less worst, solving a problem that's so far generalized that no one else looking at your code can tell why it's doing what it's doing.

(It can also happen that the more general problem doesn't have a simpler solution. If I want to print a string that has a few hard-coded values in it, formatted a particular way, I could develop a formatting spec and write a formatting library to process it, which is surely the right solution to the general problem—but, if the specific problem is likely only going to arise once, then it may be both easier to understand and a better use of time just to put in the hard-coded values.)

[PH95VuimJjqBqy]

generic is being used in two different ways.

1. linked list is a generic data structure with a relatively simple interface

2. an application with 1k configuration values is generic in that it can handle everything, but is in no way simple.