[Encosia]

I wish I could give this comment a million upvotes.

From my perspective as someone who has developed on the MS stack for 15+ years, frameworks like angular and ember strike me as (retroactively) following right in the footsteps of Silverlight and ASP.NET WebForms. To be clear, I don't think that's a good thing.

[EricDeb]

I think simplicity is undervalued in the programmer world in general. It takes so much more mind-energy for someone to implement/refactor/add-to/test complex code written by someone else as opposed to simple/verbose code.

[frou_dh]

> I think simplicity is undervalued in the programmer world in general.

I imagine every programmer will claim to value simplicity. Trouble is, they're all talking past each other because their working definition is "the way I personally do things".

[AdrianRossouw]

maybe, except that I try to improve how I do things on every iteration.

i've been finding that it helps me to think about these things in a more concrete manner, so that i can vocalize to myself what I didn't enjoy in the recent experiences.

[frou_dh]

I found Rich Hickey's dissection of simplicity to be dynamite as usual: http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Simple-Made-Easy

[etherealG]

spot on. his way of putting it that simplicity is objective and ease subjective really nails it. most people say simple and mean easy.

[AdrianRossouw]

this was a great watch. thanks for that.

It helped me focus a lot of things I have been feeling innately for a while.

[calinet6]

You're right, simplicity is undervalued.

The problem is, simplicity is often not a possibility. The problems we're solving are complex, not simple. Simple solutions to complex problems are to be sought after and cherished, but they are also incredibly difficult and idealistic.

Instead, we value pragmatism. We favor structure which simplifies, rather than structure that is simple in itself. We do this because it increases our productivity in solving highly complex problems; problems that simpler foundations would not support or would not assist.

Angular simplifies, hands down. It does this by swallowing the complexity into itself, and dealing with it in some rather intelligent ways so you don't have to. This, above all, you need to understand to use it effectively. Some complexity leaks; a great deal of it is contained and managed well.

You may love a handsaw and hammer and nails for their simplicity and clarity, and there is merit to that, but they can only build so much so quickly.

Angular is not a combination of those simple tools: it is more like a 3D printer, enabling you to build components of things and use them to make final products as fast as you can dream them up. It knows what it is, and so should you. Please excuse the lofty analogy.

[AdrianRossouw]

yeah man.

when i subtitled my blog sensible complexity, I didn't realize that it was actually something I cared so deeply about.