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A Note on Essential Complexity

(olano.dev)
159 points todsacerdoti | 2 comments | 17 Jun 24 22:08 UTC | HN request time: 0.426s | source
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kashyapc ◴[17 Jun 24 23:50 UTC] No.40712580[source]▶
A well-written article. On a similar theme of essential vs. accidental complexity: FWIW, I summarised a talk gave by Paolo Bonzini (a Linux/KVM/QEMU maintainer) here in the past:

https://lwn.net/Articles/872321/ -- A QEMU case study in grappling with software complexity

Although it was in context of QEMU, the lessons from it can be applied to many other projects.

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1. JonChesterfield ◴[18 Jun 24 09:43 UTC] No.40715745[source]▶
Thanks for this. Lessons from reality hit harder than from theory. I'm amused to learn that the distinction between essential and accidental was first described by Aristotle given that millennia later people are still struggling with the notion.
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2. kashyapc ◴[18 Jun 24 23:04 UTC] No.40723013[source]▶
Yeah, I didn't know it either that it was Aristotle until I started researching for the article! :-)