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.
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