Simple Made Easy

by Rich Hickey (1h)

Notes

03:20 Simple is objective and means lack of interleaving.

05:16 Easy is relative and means familiar or near our capabilities.

09:40 We are infatuated with the notion of programmer convenience focusing on the construction, which is irrelevant for users.

15:06 We can reason about the world and programs without category theory.

15:42 What’s true of every bug found in the field? It passed the type checker and all the tests.

Programmers know the value of everything and the cost of nothing.

Adaptation from Alan Perlis [27:36]

49:07 Programming is not about typing. It’s about thinking.

49:30 Abstraction means to draw away, not hiding complexity.

Note: Rich gave this talk multiple times. I removed a shorter and slightly different version called “Simplicity Matters” from this list.