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Simplicity Ain't Easy - Stuart Halloway

Simplicity Ain't Easy - Stuart Halloway on HackerTube: recommended by 5 Hacker News commenters across 6 separate months, 2013–2017.

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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.

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.

people recommended it
5
separate months
6
strong recommendations
0
discussed on HN
2013–2017
“He talks about his definition of "simple" (by digging into what the original English definition was) and what that means for code.”
— dkersten, May 2014, in “I don't love the single responsibility principle”

What HN commenters said

8 Hacker News comments link this video. Each one links back to its thread.

mindcrashMay 2016Recommends

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

in “Ask HN: Relationship between OO and functional programming?” · View on HN

jacobolusMay 2015Recommends

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

in “UDP and me” · View on HN

nickikDec 2014Recommends

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 There Yet? - Rich Hickey www.infoq.com/presentations/Are-We-There-Yet-Rich-Hickey - Simple Made Easy - Rich Hickey - [link] - Simplicity Ain't Easy - Stuart Halloway - ▶ this video - Ousterhout's Dichotomy Isn't (Part 2 of the Simplicity/Power/Focus Series) - Stuart Halloway - ▶ this video - The Language of the System - Rich Hickey [link] - Hammock Driven Development - Rich Hickey [link] In addition to these, there are many talk that are about people trying to run with these ideas. Datomic is a example of taking these ideas to the max, it really standas as a nice example. You can find others in talks by David Nolan for example, but there are tons of applied talks. - The Design of Datomic - Rich Hickey [link]

in “A farewell note to a programming language” · View on HN

dkerstenMay 2014Recommends

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.

in “I don't love the single responsibility principle” · View on HN

JeanPierreJul 2013Recommends

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

in “Who Says C is Simple?” · View on HN

jacobolusApr 2013Recommends

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]

in “Ask HN: What's the best technical talk you've heard?” · View on HN

Show 2 more comments
joncampbelldevMar 2017Cites it

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

in “If statements considered harmful” · View on HN

nickikJan 2014Cites it

> 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 takes the usful features like polymorpism and gives them to you. Protocols are better then interfaces, better then duck typing. > In Clojure, if I want to define a symbol there are nine different ways of doing so. There are a lot more then nine. But I would recomend rich or stus talks on simple vs easy. Just saying there is nine of something and thus its complicated is idiotic. Java has only one thing, classes, does that make it simply, or does that just mean that its hoplessly overloaded? Clojure is extreamly simply. State can only live in a var, atom, ref or agent. Every one of these has clear semantics, this includes clear sematnics in a multithreaded world. No other language has such clearly defined state management. > Clojure claims to include these language features as a way to mitigat

in “Lisp: More is less” · View on HN

Topics & tags

Software architecture & designFunctional programmingclojuresimplicitysoftware designrich hickeyfunctional programming