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by chongli 4659 days ago
Simplicity is hard work. But, there's a huge payoff.

I hate to be cynical in a thread about a very optimistic and insightful speaker but I think that it will always be the case that people will trade off easy work early on for more pain late in the game. This is called hyperbolic discounting and it's an extremely common cognitive bias in humans. The only way we'll overcome this is through extensive education and a dramatic change in culture (particularly office culture).
2 comments
aero142 4659 days ago
I'll ask a question. Have you seen a correlation between companies that have simpler code bases and are more successful in the long run? Personally, I've never seen it. The most successful companies have horrible code bases that are eventually replaced by well written modular architectures if the become successful. I personally love the idea and value of simple code but I can't say I've seen a lot of evidence for it.
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lifeisstillgood 4658 days ago
that would be markets where the deciding factor is software. I suspect you are thinking of say windows where the quality of codebase was lesser factor than installed base etc

I would suggest that web browsers is a good example - IE market share vs say Mozilla. other examples are Sage vs freeagnet ?

hard to unpick market tactics and strategy from code - but it's hard to deny there is a link intuitively

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stonemetal 4658 days ago
My sense of what is intuitive follows his http://prog21.dadgum.com/87.html

Basically code quality doesn't really matter, product vision is what matters.

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hcarvalhoalves 4659 days ago
That depends on whether this hypothetical codebase is an asset or a sunken cost.
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Kaizyn 4659 days ago
All code no matter how beautiful is a sunken cost.
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espeed 4658 days ago
Run upstairs...

"Use difficulty as a guide not just in selecting the overall aim of your company, but also at decision points along the way. At Viaweb one of our rules of thumb was run upstairs. Suppose you are a little, nimble guy being chased by a big, fat, bully. You open a door and find yourself in a staircase. Do you go up or down? I say up. The bully can probably run downstairs as fast as you can. Going upstairs his bulk will be more of a disadvantage. Running upstairs is hard for you but even harder for him." -- PG

http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html

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