Less what?
But, believe it or not, it’s a lot more work to do less. As the famous quote from Blaise Pascal says: “This letter is very long because I had no time to make it short.”
Following up on my last post, Simple is Easy, my next topic is “Simple is Hard”. As in “hard for you, the developer”.
To be blunt: it’s going to take a lot of work for you to create something that’s simple. You’ll spend significant time thinking and not actually writing any code. This can be difficult for a lot of developers. After all, they equate productivity with typing. But realistically you probably will spend more time thinking than coding.
When it comes to simplicity, your design matters. A lot. You can’t just bang out a solution, figuring it out as you’re coding. Sure, you’ll end up with something and it may even be useful. But it most certainly won’t be simple.
A really good reason to not spend a lot of time coding is so that you can be more flexible. If you come up with a new, better and simpler design, you’ll be more likely to throw away your old design if you didn’t spend many hours coding it up. It’s just a fact. We all get attached to the code we write.
Be simple. Your users will appreciate it.
For your users, simple means one thing: make it easy to use. This can mean a lot of things to different people but the key thing to keep in mind is that your software should be approachable.
Your users don’t want to read manuals or go to training in order to effectively use your software. They want to just figure it out as they use it. This means your software needs to respect them. It should be easy for them to learn how to use it. Most importantly, it should be easy for them to correct any mistakes they will make.
Because, rest assured, your users will make mistakes. When the user no longer fears making mistakes they’ll enjoy using your software. And then you’ll start getting feedback that says: “Your software is so easy to use. I love it!”. Trust me, you’ll enjoy that, too!
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