stcgon Hacker News • Recommends
On “The Egison Programming Language”
Related: the great and timeless talk called "Simplicity Matters" by Rich Hickey - link to this video (By the way, any talk by Rich Hickey is worth watching)
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#richhickey#clojure#simplicity
Rails Conf 2012 Keynote: Simplicity Matters by Rich Hickey
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42K subscribers • 73 videos on Hallway • Conference channel
- Recommended by 10 people: 8 on Hacker News, 1 on Lobsters and 1 curated list.
- A classic. People kept recommending it from 2015 to 2023.
- Presented by Rich Hickey, creator of Clojure
- An opinion. It argues one side of a question engineers disagree on.
Intermediate. Assumes working knowledge.
220K views14 years ago10 recommendations
Software designProgramming languagesSimplicity and complexitySoftware architectureFunctional programming
Rich Hickey explains the difference between simple and easy, arguing that software complexity arises from complecting things.
Rich Hickey, the author of Clojure and designer of Datomic, is a software developer with over 20 years of experience in various domains. Rich has worked on scheduling systems, broadcast automation, audio analysis and fingerprinting, database design, yield management, exit poll systems, and machine listening, in a variety of languages.Why it's here
10 people recommend thisWhat people say. Highly recommended as a foundational talk on software design, complexity, and the benefits of simplicity over ease.
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Under “Software Development”
Simplicity Matters 00:36:54 by **Rich Hickey** (Simple Made Easy revisited) (2012)
siverson Hacker News • Recommends
On “Is it really 'Complex'? Or did we just make it 'Complicated'? [video]”
Very interesting related talk about complecting things - "Simple Made Easy" - by Rich Hickey, inventor of Clojure: link If you're a Ruby person, maybe watch this version instead, since it's almost the same talk but for a Rails Conference, with a few references: link to this video
NegatioNon Hacker News • Recommends
On “How we secretly introduced Haskell and got away with it”
…ngth. I don't want a billion wrapper-objects that obfuscate my code, and makes the surface area of it bigger than it has to be. Often I struggle understanding code more because of how it was separated, than because of the complexity of what it actually does. I liked Rich Hickeys talk "Simple made Easy" 1 and "Brian Will: Why OOP is Bad" 2 1: link to this video 2: link…
cstrahanon Hacker News • Recommends
On “D as a Better C”
…nd"). Simplicity and ease are distinct, and one does not necessarily imply the other; it's not hard to find convoluted designs that feel easy due to familiarity, while a much smaller, consistent design will feel difficult because the concepts (while fewer in number) are foreign. Rich Hickey (creator of Clojure) gave a great talk on easy vs simple: link to this video Here's something familiar to most professional web developers: JavaScript. But it's also complicated: link Here's the spec: link And here's something unfamiliar and often considered difficult: lambda calculus. And yet it's very simple. Here's the entire definition of lambda expressions (lifted from Wikipedia): --- Lambda expressions are…
hbton Hacker News • Recommends
On “Simplistic programming is underrated”
The blog post barely gets into the idea of what simplicity means in programming. If you have any interest in the topic, I recommend Rich Hickey talk "Simplicity matters" link to this video My personal favorite is: Living with complexity 2010 by Don Norman (Author of Design of everyday things) link
geksillaon Hacker News • Recommends
On “Ask HN: What is your favourite tech talk?”
Rich Hickey - "simple made easy" link to this video Rob Pike - "concurrency is not parallelism" link Uncle Bob Martin - "future of programming" link Martin Kleppmann - "transactions: myths, surprises and opportunities" link Simon Brown - "software architecture vs code" link
cutleron Hacker News • Recommends
On “Why Clojure?”
Clojure is by far the best programming language I've ever used. Rich Hickey's Sermons On The Mount changed the game of programming once and for all. With Clojure you could finally have your Lisp cake and eat it. Witness the sheer chutzpah of the guy when he basically told Ruby devs they were doing it wrong at Rails Conf in 2012 ( link to this video ).
toshon Hacker News • Recommends
On “The Roots of Lisp (2001)”
…d transformations of data (illuminating simplicity) in any case: it is worth digging deeper, one thing that kept me away was not knowing where to start (analysis paralysis). in hindsight picking any Lisp would have been great (instead of postponing). Find a thread and start pulling :) Rich Hickey’s talks were a great entry point for me link e.g. link to this video (the “Simplicity Matters” keynote at Rails Conf 2012) edit: Land of Lisp is a great book as well…
u/nuke01in r/Clojure • Mentions
…day this on HN:
>Clojure is by far the best programming language I've ever used. Rich Hickey's Sermons On The Mount changed the game of programming once and for all. With Clojure you could finally have your Lisp cake and eat it. Witness the sheer chutzpah of the guy when he basically told Ruby devs they were doing it wrong at Rails Conf in 2012 ([video
Googling `Rich Hickey's Sermons On the Mount` doesn't find anything more useful than other references to this? Does the OP mean the YT he linked or is this just some example of the "chutzpah"?
Grateful for anyone who can point me in the right direction! Thanks…
wgingon Hacker News • Mentions
On “Simplify: move code into database functions”
He didn't watch 'Simple Made Easy'. He watched a different Hickey talk, 'Simplicity Matters': link to this video
pcoteon Hacker News • Mentions
On “The Triumph of Stupidity (1933)”
…they can't adapt as easily to environmental changes. Consequentially, this creates conflict between system and environment that can often be destructive or violent. Or at least that's my social hypothesis. I based my idea on the Rich Hickey "Simple vs. Easy" talk on software complexity. I think his ideas could be generalized to societies as well. link to this video…
gavinpcon Hacker News • Mentions
On “After reading “Rails is yesterday’s software”, I need to reply”
The original post (not this OP) was clearly a response to Rich Hickey's talk "Simplicity Matters," which was given at a Ruby conference.0 Particularly the part about "1,000 gems," which Hickey calls "hairballs" in the talk. I've started calling all packages hairballs since watching that. 1 link to this video
ClashTheBunnyon Hacker News • Mentions
On “Zenzizenzizenzic”
This is the difference between easy and simple. Easy to use is often hard to learn. This is simple. Many of the best tools are this way. Violins are another great example. I like clojure for a similar reason: Rich Hickey explaining the difference at rails conf: link to this video
codecurveon Hacker News • Mentions
On “Fantastic DSLs and where to find them”
Sure, no arguments there. It does save time in JavaScript and a large part of that is because the language has been designed around mutability. Part of that trade-off is that JavaScript can't make the same guarantees about what happens when you pass an object into a function. It's harder to be confident that a given program is correct. Immutability is just a part of the "simple made easy"1 ethos of Clojure and I think most Clojure programmers will argue that taking the time to understand that philosophy _is_ worth the investment. 1 link to this video