Simplicity Ain't Easy - Stuart Halloway
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN commenters recommend it, alongside Rich Hickey's talk, for its precise definition of simple versus easy and its implications for code design.
What it is
Stuart Halloway argues that simplicity is objective, with a definition and etymology useful to programmers, rather than a subjective buzzword. He shows how this view informs Clojure's design and how to make programs simpler.
Recommended by 5 HN commenters across 6 different months, 2013 to 2017.
What Hacker News said
Recommends jacobolus · 2013-04 · on “Ask HN: What's the best technical talk you've heard?”
Also see Stuart Halloway’s earlier talk, Simplicity Ain’t Easy . There’s a fair amount of overlap with Rich Hickey’s talk, but both are worth watching: [this video] And also his talk Radical Simplicity : [LINK]
Recommends JeanPierre · 2013-07 · on “Who Says C is Simple?”
To get an even better explanation on what the word "simple" means and what it derives from, I would recommend "Simplicity Ain't Easy" by Stuart Halloway[1]. While it is very similar to "Simple made Easy", it focuses a lot more on the etymology of the words "simple" and "complex" and how people misuse the word. [1]: [this video]
Recommends dkersten · 2014-05 · on “I don't love the single responsibility principle”
I'll add this to your links: [this video] He talks about his definition of "simple" (by digging into what the original English definition was) and what that means for code.
Recommends nickik · 2014-12 · on “A farewell note to a programming language”
I would suggest to you that Clojure has a very clear "the Clojure Way" I would say, more so then almost any other language. It goes beyond syntax to a pretty deep design level. Its not even all that unique to clojure, you could do 'the clojure way' in other languages, but they usally dont. Some of the importent keynotes from some of the early conjs are really importent, and they really went deep in the community, you can see it in almost every major library. Another commenter has mentioned the notion of 'simple' but thats not really all that clear. I not enougth of a writer to tell you about it, but I can give you the resources: - This classic got Clojure on the map for many people: Are We T
Recommends jacobolus · 2015-05 · on “UDP and me”
If you haven’t seen them, I recommend the Clojure guys’ talks about the subject of simplicity. They reached into the etymological history of the word “simple” to pull out its early definition, which is quite precise and IMO tremendously useful in this context, unlike the confused muddle of modern definitions. Rich Hickey, “Simple Made Easy”: [LINK] Stu Halloway, “Simplicity Ain’t Easy”: [this video]
Recommends mindcrash · 2016-05 · on “Ask HN: Relationship between OO and functional programming?”
Stuart Halloway has a great talk on this called "Simplicity Ain't Easy" [0] where he more or less states that a FP language like Clojure is basically a better designed OOP language, because FP is basically contains all its strengths (namespaces, abstractions and the like) and none of its weaknesses (e.g. uncontrolled state mutation) and you are able to select and use specific features you need to solve a specific problem, and not being saddled with every feature (including the ones you do not need to solve the problem at hand) at once. [0] [this video]
Cites nickik · 2014-01 · on “Lisp: More is less”
> OOP is widely-used and easily comprehended because it is a fairly simple way of modeling reality that is compatible with how human beings do it. Have we not learn by now that these systems are not easy to reason about. Are not all the things one first learns (ie Animal -> Dog) bullshit and should be avoided. Why is it in every good OO book that, composition is better then inheritance. Why is every OO book full of examples about how to avoid mutabiltiy and make the system easy to reason about? The idea that OOP systems (as generally) thougth of goes completly out of the window as soon as you have any kind of concurency, even just event handling. > which rejects OOP It does not reject, it ta
Cites joncampbelldev · 2017-03 · on “If statements considered harmful”
polymorphism is very good, but not handcuffed to OOP. Clojure protocols, Haskell typeclasses (and many other examples I'm sure) provide the same functionality "a la carte" without the rest of OOP's features coming along for the ride (to paraphrase Rich Hickey and Stuart Halloway). More eloquently explained details in this talk at around the 21 min mark [0]. [0] [this video]