Merely removing features is not deep enough. This is fundamentally at its origins an architecture challenge, and a development management challenge. Removing features is rearguard action, not properly conceived engagement with the problem.
Complexity can be neutral; code size by itself is not horrible in an era of TB drives. But code size hides bugs, and security flaws, and exponentially more complicated development challenges the more components and parts that one must consider interacting with each other. ESR was wrong; he's asserting that simplicity is too hard and we should give up. We can't give up; software projects and distros / OS versions that get too complex become unsustainable and fail in the market (public opinion, or just financially). He does not seem to understand the harm of complexity, and does not here appear to understand the role that singular architects and dev leaders and style guides and code standards can have. A very few people, or one, can point a project in a direction that both allows lots of participation AND remains focused and architecturally clean. PHK wasn't entirely right; he's gotten down in the weeds on a much larger problem, and the weeds distracted everyone. But he has a point. On Wed, Apr 22, 2015 at 1:26 PM, Trevor Parscal <[email protected]> wrote: > I'm a fan of removing features when the feature is not currently done well > and we aren't going to do it well anytime soon, if ever. Products with > fewer high quality features are superior in many ways to products with many > low quality features. > > - Trevor > > On Wednesday, April 22, 2015, Stas Malyshev <[email protected]> > wrote: > > > Hi! > > > > > This leads to an interesting marketing possibility, and one that I have > > > seen in action only a few times: the idea that a subsequent release of > a > > > product might be smaller or have fewer features than the previous > > version, > > > and that this property should be considered a selling point. Perhaps > the > > > market is not mature enough to accept it yet, but it remains a > promising > > > and classic ideal — less is more. > > > > Apple is doing it from time to time, and is not shy about it. I'm not > > sure I personally am a big fan, but it works for many people. > > > > Another interesting take on the same topic from ESR: > > http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=6737 > > > > -- > > Stas Malyshev > > [email protected] <javascript:;> > > > > _______________________________________________ > > Wikitech-l mailing list > > [email protected] <javascript:;> > > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l > _______________________________________________ > Wikitech-l mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l > -- -george william herbert [email protected] _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
