Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments
NOTE: use Perl; is on undef hiatus. You can read content, but you can't post it. More info will be forthcoming forthcomingly.

All the Perl that's Practical to Extract and Report

The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

Complexity 3 Comments More | Login | Reply /

 Full
 Abbreviated
 Hidden
More | Login | Reply
Loading... please wait.
  • You remove complexity by redefining the problem, abandoning unnecessary constraints, or fixing the root of the problem. Most of that means figuring out the actual desired end state rather than the perceived one. For instance, "I want a list of customers" instead of "I want an HTML table generated dynamically from our legacy database". In the military we call this "commander's intent"---things are going to go to crap and rather than sticking to the plan, we improvise, adapt, and overcome to acheive the co
    • Great answer, it got me thinking.

      "You remove complexity by redefining the problem"

      This I like. A lot.

      "Geniuses remove it"

      I guess one way of removing complexity is to just swipe it under the rug--data hiding and modular design. By definition you hide complexity and provide a simpler way of looking at things.
      • Sweeping it under the rug is the pragmatist approach---that's just dealing with it. Abstraction means the complexity is still there even though it is hidden.

        My DBI example may have been ungood, but then again, you can completely remove the database server from the problem---not just in abstraction but also in reality. You can use DBI with flat files (just like we do in Stonehenge's DBI course where we write a Zork text adventure game starting with flat files and DBI, then at the end convert it to mysql without changing any of the code (other than the DSN)).

        I wish that I could come up with a better example, or one not based in technology.

        What's that thing that Captain Kirk did in Star Trek II? :)
Stories, comments, journals, and other submissions on use Perl; are Copyright 1998-2006, their respective owners.