The Quotation IndexThe trusted reference for quotations and the sources behind them
Tag Tag Complexity
There are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies.
Tony Hoare The Emperor’s Old Clothes · 1981

Quotes

“Simplicity is the hallmark of truth—we should know better, but complexity continues to have a morbid attraction. When you give for an academic audience a lecture that is crystal clear from alpha to omega, your audience feels cheated [...] The sore truth is that complexity sells better.”

Edsger Dijkstra · The Threats to Computing Science, 1984 · Primary source

“Don’t get enamored with the complexities you have learned to live with (be they of your own making or imported). The lurking suspicion that something could be simplified is the world’s richest source of rewarding challenges.”

Edsger Dijkstra · Advice to a Young Scientist, c. 1989 · Primary source

“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald · The Crack-Up, 1936 · Primary source

“The price of reliability is the pursuit of the utmost simplicity.”

Tony Hoare · The Emperor’s Old Clothes, 1981 · Primary source

“The great defect of scale, of course, which makes the game interesting, so that the big people don’t always win—is that as you get big, you get the bureaucracy.”

Charlie Munger · Poor Charlie’s Almanack, 2005 · Primary source

“Simplicity is a necessary precondition for reliability.”

Edsger Dijkstra · The Strengths of the Academic Enterprise, 1994 · Primary source

“The most important property of a program is whether it accomplishes the intentions of its user.”

Tony Hoare · An Axiomatic Basis for Computer Programming, 1969 · Primary source

“Inside every large program is a small program struggling to get out.”

Tony Hoare · Efficient Production of Large Programs, 1970 · Secondary source

“Most problems in real life are poorly understood, in that the real problem is often something different from what it is orginally thought to be.”

Tony Hoare · Computer Science, 1971 · Primary source

“In the development of our understanding of complex phenomena, the most powerful tool available to the human intellect is abstraction. Abstraction arises from a recognition of similarities between certain objects, situations, or processes in the real world, and the decision to concentrate on these similarities, and to ignore for the time being the differences.”

Tony Hoare · Structured Programming, 1972 · Primary source

“I’m afraid that’s the way it [reality] is. If there are twenty factors and they interact some, you’ll have to learn to handle it—because that’s the way the world is. But you won’t find it that hard if you go at it Darwin-like, step by step with curious persistence. You’ll be amazed at how good you can get.”

Charlie Munger · Poor Charlie’s Almanack, 2005 · Primary source

“Simplicity is a great virtue but it requires hard work to achieve it and education to appreciate it. And to make matters worse: complexity sells better.”

Edsger Dijkstra · On the Nature of Computing Science, 1984 · Primary source

“Many computer programs of the present day are of inordinate size—many thousands of pages of closely printed text. Mathematics has no tradition of dealing with expressions on this scale.”

Tony Hoare · The Mathematics of Programming, 1985 · Primary source

“Good ideas don’t often scale.”

Alan Kay · Alan Kay’s talk at Creative Think seminar, 1982 · Secondary source

Related Tags

Simplicity 35 Curiosity 19 Persistence 19 Problem-solving 15 Understanding 15 Reliability 12 Reasoning 8 Trade-offs 7 Efficiency 7 Discernment 6 Software reliability 6 Software design 5 Verification 5 Clarity 5 Programming 4 Design 4 Abstraction 4 Software 4 Research 4 Intellectual flexibility 4 Analysis 3 Mathematics 3 Hoare’s law 2 Generalisation 2 Charles Darwin 2 Intellectual effort 2 Systems design 2 Implementation 2 Scale 1 Systems thinking 1 Bureaucracy 1 Organisational scale 1 Corporate growth 1 Intellectual prestige 1 Academic culture 1 Intellectual habits 1 Scalability 1 Contradictory ideas 1 Mental resilience 1