A tale of two developers

@ Less is More

I always marveled at the following scenario. Picture two developers; one can take a difficult business problem, boil it down to its essence, and code it, making it simple and understandable. The second developer, by contrast, doesn’t really understand it (or take the time to understand it) and hacks away cryptically until he, partly by luck, gets it to work acceptably. Now imagine a manager with no development experience, who looks at the work of the two developers. The first, he finds simple, and understandable, and finds this work unremarkable. The second he finds cryptic, and can’t really make heads or tails of it. His (erroneous) conclusion is that the second cryptic programmer is a genius, with great work, after all – it’s beyond his comprehension.

Developers know that it takes a great deal of work to simplify a difficult problem, to filter out the non-essential issues and make it straightforward and understandable. It may have all the hallmarks of ideal software; – easier to understand and maintain, and also easier, because there is simply less of it. It might even execute faster for many reasons including a smaller cache footprint, and not doing unnecessary thing. All else being equal less is more here.

Sabe a pior parte: tudo é incrivelmente verdadeiro.
As pessoas esquecem de que em quase tudo na vida:
Menos significa mais.

Blogs, Capivarou!, Internet, Software

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