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Do the simplest thing that could possibly work

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1070 points dondraper36 | 1 comments | 29 Aug 25 19:05 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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al_borland ◴[29 Aug 25 19:36 UTC] No.45068433[source]▶
“Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.”

As someone who has strived for this from early on, the problem the article overlooks is not knowing some of these various technologies everyone is talking about out, because I never felt I needed them. Am I missing something I need, but just ignorant, or is that just needless complexity that a lot of people fall for?

I don’t want to test these things out to learn them in actual projects, as I’d be adding needless complexity to systems for my own selfish ends of learning these things. I worked with someone who did this and it was a nightmare. However, without a real project, I find it’s hard to really learn something well and find the sharp edges.

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1. SPascareli13 ◴[29 Aug 25 20:44 UTC] No.45069194[source]▶
Implement the simplest thing that works, maybe even by hand at first, instead of adding the tool that does "the whole thing" when you don't need "the whole thing".

Eventually you might start adding more things to it because of needs you haven't anticipated, do it.

If you find yourself building the tool that does "the whole thing" but worse, then now you know that you could actually use the tool that does "the whole thing".

Did you waste time not using the tool right from the start? That's almost a filosofical question, now you know what you need, you had the chance to avoid it if it turned out you didn't, and maybe 9 times out of 10 you will be right.