The Battle of the Simplifiers and Complicators
Stewart Gebbie
20070816

Ever noticed how so much technology seems really complicated. But what does it
do? I'm not actually sure. We have these smaller faster computers with more
memory and storage and yet we still don't have a single reasonable word
processor.

This is the story of technologies and the battle between those who simplify
problems and those that complicate solutions. What's really funny is how most
people seem to cling to the complicated stuff. Rather than giving you a search
box, the earlier search engines gave you an entire portal with all sorts of
gumph. Google was considered absolutely radical because the insisted on
giving you a, ummm wait for it, a search box.

Just to set the record straight in the beginning, I am biased, and rather think
that I fall into the simplifier category.

Along comes J2EE, this is full of all sorts of gumph. Most people never really
use more than servlets. But the big corporates still want all the extra things
that the complicators tell them they must absolutely need because, well you
see they have big complicated problems to solve.

Have you ever tried telling a large corporate, that while you appreciate that
their business is big, it is, well, actually not that complicated and so it
probably would benefit greatly from some simple solutions. It's not that this
goes down badly, they just don't get it - how can their vast company be seen
as simple, surely this is trying to trivialise it and say that it is not as
important as they think it is. Yet iPods do really well even though they have
almost no buttons - nice and simple.

So at the one end we have the large companies saying - no, but really, our
business is awfully complicated, we must need complicated solutions with
thousands of complicated pieces to solve any of our problems. What they
probably are not seeing is that they are confusing multiplicity with
complexity. Just because I have a messy back garden with thousands of leaves
all over the place, it does not mean that I need to have a solution consisting
of thousands of little uniquely constructed nano-bots running around and
picking up the one leaf they where brought into existence to collect and
dispose of. Instead it's OK if I realise that the problem is conceptually
simple - get all leaves into a bag and off to the rubbish dump. For this I
probably need a bag and a rake, followed by a car.

Then on the other end of the scale we have all of these techie people who
absolutely have to find a way to make every silly feature in their computer
bag of tricks do something. They look at all problems like a kid with a box of
Lego - how can I use up every possible Lego brick and make something that
looks kinda like a house. Usually it ends up being a house with three sci-fi
spires and a detachable room that doubles as a helicopter (had to use the
rotor somewhere). Given what we've seen programmers do with XML, just imagine
what fun these guys would have creating the machines to build thousands of
semi-sentient nano-bots that will run around and pick up the leaf they where
destined for - much more fun that making a good bag and rake, and a heck of a
lot more fun that having to use the bag and rake.

Put these to groups together under the guise of tackling critical business
problems in organisations with budgets the size of a small city or country
and you end up with the solutions we see around us. Lets not even get onto
what happens when you throw consulting firms and politicians into the mix.

Luckily there are those that look at problems and actually want to find the
simplest possible thing that works and solves the problem properly. They
normally get scorned for saying things like - but really CORBA is too
complicated and then they make ICE, or SOAP is too bloated and complicated and
then they advocate REST. Or, all I want is for the people who read the web
site to also be able to edit the words on the pages, and so they create wikis.
Or, when I click the off button under Windows, I funnily enough expect the
computer to turn off so then they make a Mac. Or, because petrol cars are
messy and they make those cool electric cars that we don't see all around us.

So next time you see a "big" problem, try and work out if it is actually a
simple problem in a "big" context. Maybe the simple solution really is the
right one - and heck, it probably won't take a defence budget to try it out.
In fact, just turning the lights off after you leave and printing out fewer of
those 500 page functional specifications, might cover the costs.