Code Simplicity

Code Simplicity

What’s Wrong With Computers

by Max Kanat-Alexander
Published on January 12, 2008

Note: This is a “classic” article from my old blog, but with some new revisions. This article was where I started with the idea of simplicity in computing, and I’ve been going on that idea ever since.

Computers have created a major societal change. The reason is that you can do more work with fewer people. That’s really the entire value of a computer—it can do a lot of work, really fast. If a person was to do, by hand, all the math that a computer does just when it starts up, it would probably take the rest of that person’s life.

So that’s great.

Problem is, they break. They break all the time. If anything in my house broke as frequently as my computer, I would return it. Most of the people that I know, their computer crashes at least once a day. Almost every day, I see a computer break in a way that I’ve never seen before. That’s been pretty much every day since I was about eight years old, so I’ve probably seen a computer break over 41,000 different ways, now.

That’s not great.

Why do computers break so much? For software, there’s one reason, and one reason only. Bad programmers.

Now, I didn’t used to be a programmer, and so I wondered about this sort of thing. I suspected that there were bad programmers, but it was sort of like blaming “witches” for a bad crop harvest. I didn’t really know anything about the subject, so there was some reasonable doubt.

Now that I am a programmer, and I have worked for a long time in a professional setting, and have talked extensively to other people who have been professional programmers for a long time, I can confirm that it really is bad programmers.

So, what is a bad programmer and why would somebody be one? This term, “bad programmer,” is pretty ambiguous. Also, most of the people I’ve ever met aren’t totally illogical, so there must be some reason why they would do “bad” programming.

Basically, it all revolves around complexity. Keep Reading

Welcome to Code Simplicity!

by Max Kanat-Alexander
Published on January 12, 2008

Welcome to Code Simplicity!

There are a lot of technical blogs in the world. There are a lot of technical people in the world. It’s a technical world.

Unfortunately, it’s also becoming more and more a complex world.

The focus of Code Simplicity is to discuss simplicity and simple things in the world of computers. I think the greatest application of intelligence is taking something complex and making it simple.

If you know of any particular examples where somebody took something really complex and made it simple, let me know and I’d be happy to feature it here. I’d really like real-world stories of how simplicity improved your life in the world of computing.

At first, I’m going to be re-posting some (possibly revised) articles from my personal blog. After that, there should be some new content, and hopefully, some user-submitted content!

Anyhow, this is mostly just a “Hello, and Welcome” post, and soon there will be more real content here. 🙂

-Max

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Max Kanat-Alexander
May 17, 2022

I'm happy to announce that my book, Code Simplicity: The Fundamentals of Software, is now completely free: https://www.codesimplicity.com/book/

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May 17, 2022

After a thread on how difficult it is to acquire books in some countries, I started a conversation with @OReillyMedia about how we could make my book more available.

Thanks to some great work by O'Reilly, my first book is now completely free: https://www.codesimplicity.com/book/

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April 11, 2022

The work you do has an effect on the world. Even if it’s a small effect, it’s still affecting some part of the world in some way. You are in fact constantly changing the world.

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March 25, 2022

You can’t solve problems that don’t exist. When somebody tells me a solution is “unknowable,” they are always talking about some abstract thing, never the real problem that actually exists in the physical universe. You have to solve the problem that actually exists.

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March 18, 2022

Although we work on technology, it’s important to remember that we do it to help people, and that those people (most of whom we don’t know and have no idea specifically how they depend on us) are impacted by our work. https://twitter.com/ruffianrabbit/status/1504570934702874630

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