Keep It Simple, Stupid! (Thierry Nabeth's blog)

Keep It Simple, Smartly (from Andrew McAfee’s Blog)

2009-11-04T03:42:00.000-08:00

A very long time I did not posted in this blog.

Well, here is an interesting blog post from Andrew McAfee, an Harvard professor, who is also the inventor of the term Entreprise 2.0.

Keep It Simple, Smartly

http://andrewmcafee.org/2009/10/keep-it-simple-smartly/

There are two kinds of people: complexifiers and simplifiers

2008-03-04T13:58:00.000-08:00

Just a reference to this blog posting.

http://www.scottberkun.com/blog/2006/there-are-two-kinds-of-people-complexifiers-and-simplifers/

There are two kinds of people: people that make things complex and people that simplify.

Complexifiers are averse to reduction.
Simplifiers thrive on concision.

The author bring genetic here. Not very scientific but not impossible. (different instinct of survival).

Anyway, it should not be too difficult to guess which category has ma preference.

HBR article and podcast: "Simplicity-Minded Management."

2007-12-21T02:33:00.000-08:00

I just wanted to mention this interesting article and associated podcast related to complexity:

Ron Ashkenas, managing partner of consulting firm Robert H. Schaffer & Associates and author of the December 2007 Harvard Business Review article "Simplicity-Minded Management."

http://harvardbusinessonline.hbsp.harvard.edu/hbsp/hbr/articles/article.jsp?articleID=r0712h&ml_action=get-article&pageNumber=1&ml_subscriber=true

The podcast is available at:
http://hbsp2.libsyn.com/index.php?post_id=284772

Complexity and XBR

2007-02-24T03:51:00.000-08:00

As I am now listening very interesting postcasts of Interviews conducted by Jon Udell , I found this relatively old posting related to a discussion of Jon related to XBRL, and in particular the concern about the complexity of this system.

see:
XBRL follow-up

Note: As I am trying to collect information about complexity, I realise that not real research exists on complexity of information systems (which I consider as something that appears of critical importance in Information Systems). Well, this is not exactly true, since there has been a lot of work on the complexity of algorithm (NP-complete, exponential, etc.), or complexity according to complex Systems approach (fractals, etc.). But I believe this kind of research is not able to cover a very important point: Complexity of an information systems related to architecture and agility, and the property of an information system to be able to change with an adequate level of effort and resources. For instance this point is related to ideas such as locality (being able to change something without having some side effects), or simplicity of the number of concepts manipulated (Razor of Ocam) and in particular being able to understand the system without having first to understand a Zillions of concepts.

The Law of Standards

2006-11-29T03:26:00.000-08:00

The Law of Standards
by John F. Sowa
In 1991, while I was participating in some standards projects, I sent an e-mail message to my colleagues, in which I formulated the following hypothesis:
Whenever a major organization develops a new system as an official standard for X, the primary result is the widespread adoption of some simpler system as a de facto standard for X.

I just wanted to record an interesting resource related to standards and complexity.

One of the reason of 'World of Warcraft' success: simplicity

2006-09-07T02:19:00.000-07:00

The secrets of 'World of Warcraft's' success CNET News.com

"The first mantra of Blizzard is definitely 'easy to learn, difficult to master,'" Pardo said. "Depth comes first and accessibility later."
He said some other game companies make the mistake of trying to build all their games' levels at once, and in the process, they forget that a game must have a deep sense of fun or players won't stick around.

Atlassian Developer Blog: Simplicity and XP

2006-05-25T14:35:00.000-07:00

Interesting blog posting

Atlassian Developer Blog: Simplicity and XP:
"Simplicity and XP"
I like simple things. Why bother making something complex if the simple thing works. This reminds me of the story, where NASA spent one billion dollars inventing a pen that would work in space while Russians simply used the pencil. Read more about The billion-dollar space pen myth.
Simplicity is one of the four values of Extreme Programming."

Indeed, I also believe that eXtrem programing has some connection with simplicity

Ruby on Rails chases simplicity in programming | CNET News.com

2005-11-01T01:32:00.000-08:00

Ruby on Rails chases simplicity in programming | CNET News.com

"We're trying to fuse those two extremes (of Java and PHP) and be quick and clean," Hansson said. PHP applications are difficult to maintain, while Java Enterprise Edition software is a "complex monstrosity" that's hard to learn, he said.

Andreessen: PHP succeeding where Java isn't | CNET News.com

2005-10-20T02:28:00.000-07:00

Andreessen: PHP succeeding where Java isn't | CNET News.com

Andreessen>> "Java is much more programmer-friendly than C or C++, or was for a few years there until they made just as complicated. It's become arguably even harder to learn than C++," Andreessen said. And the mantle of simplicity is being passed on: "PHP is such is an easier environment to develop in than Java."

I personally also tend to share this view, that java evolved in a way more complicated than was really neccessary.
This is a pity, because, I believe Java is a very nice language.

O'Reilly Network: What Is Web 2.0

2005-10-05T14:21:00.000-07:00

O'Reilly Network: What Is Web 2.0

XML.com: Anti-Awards 2001

2005-09-30T04:42:00.000-07:00

XML.com: Anti-Awards 2001

Anti-Awards for 2001, intended to burst some overinflated XML bubbles.

OpenLaszlo

2005-08-22T08:06:00.000-07:00

OpenLaszlo

Generating rich client fash application very easily, and in a relatively declarative way.

And besides, it is free and open source!

Le retour de la for�t p�trifi�e ! par Alain Lefebvre - JDN Solutions

2005-07-11T09:27:00.000-07:00

Le retour de la for�t p�trifi�e ! par Alain Lefebvre - JDN Solutions

In french.

A few interesting ideas stated very clearly.

"Par exemple, le KM (Knowledge Management ou gestion de la connaissance) a enfin trouvé sa solution avec les Wikis mais il n’y a que les experts du KM à l’ignorer. Ces derniers vont vous expliquer, très doctement, que les Wikis ne sont pas une solution acceptable, qu’il manque ceci, qu’il faudrait cela… "

"Où en est-on enfin sur ce fameux sujet des Web services ? Nulle part !"

Blogs and social networks and wikis, oh my! | CNET News.com

2005-05-14T14:59:00.000-07:00

Blogs and social networks and wikis, oh my! | CNET News.com

Relax, Everything Is Deeply Intertwingled: Weblications

2005-04-07T00:57:00.000-07:00

Relax, Everything Is Deeply Intertwingled: Weblications

adaptive path � ajax: a new approach to web applications

2005-04-06T03:37:00.000-07:00

adaptive path � ajax: a new approach to web applications

Or how to make a client dtml page comminicate with a server without reloading the page.

Hint: it calls XMLHttpRequest from the Javascript

Succinctness is Power

2005-03-25T08:58:00.000-08:00

Succinctness is Power

About the advantage to have more higher level programming languages.

Piled Higher and Deeper

2005-02-28T05:48:00.000-08:00

phdcomics.com

Hilarious!

Salon.com Technology | Steal this bookmark!

2005-02-10T01:58:00.000-08:00

Salon.com Technology | Steal this bookmark!

This article talks about the concept of tagging.

What's a tag? Think of a tag as a simple category name.
Bloggers categorize their posts, photos, and links with any tag that makes sense.

Extracts:

On social networking sites like Orkut or Friendster, people join, and then declare their alliances to each other explicitly. On sites that employ tagging, the networks emerge, implicitly, out of the shared interests of users. Order isn't proclaimed, it just happens.

"It's like Friendster for knowledge as far as I'm concerned," says Howard Rheingold. "I look to see who the other people are on del.icio.us who tag the same things that I think are important. Then, I can look and see what else they've tagged ... And isn't that part of the collective intelligence of the Web? You meet people who find things that you find interesting and useful -- and that multiplies your ability to find things that are interesting and useful, and other people feed off of you."

Tagging has the potential to spread beyond just a few creative Web sites. Users of Google's Gmail can add "labels" to their e-mail messages -- the equivalent of tags for e-mail. Matthew MacLaurin, a program manager in the social computing group at Microsoft Research, thinks that tags are the future for computer desktop organization: "I personally believe that, over time, tags will rival, if not replace, folders as a primary way that users create organization ... Eventually it will be more like folder names -- unnoticed and absolutely essential."

Friendster=Juvenile,Tribe=burningman,Linkedin=business: Orkut=Geeks | Digital Squeeze Consulting Convergence

2005-01-03T03:57:00.000-08:00

Friendster=Juvenile,Tribe=burningman,Linkedin=business: Orkut=Geeks | Digital Squeeze Consulting Convergence

About Online Social Networking.

The Seattle Times: Pacific Northwest Magazine

2005-01-01T12:24:00.000-08:00

The Seattle Times: Pacific Northwest Magazine

An article related to cognitive overload.

The Law of Standards

2004-12-21T02:42:00.000-08:00

The Law of Standards

Quote:
"Whenever a major organization develops a new system as an official standard for X, the primary result is the widespread adoption of some simpler system as a de facto standard for X."

[print version] Commodore 64 reincarnated on a chip | CNET News.com

2004-12-20T15:18:00.000-08:00

[print version] Commodore 64 reincarnated on a chip | CNET News.com

YAMHILL, Ore.--There is a story behind every electronic gadget sold on the QVC shopping channel. This one leads to a ramshackle farmhouse in rural Oregon, which is the home and circuit design lab of Jeri Ellsworth, a 30-year-old high school dropout and self-taught computer chip designer.

c.a. steinkuehler - MMOG research

2004-12-19T02:45:00.000-08:00

c.a. steinkuehler - MMOG research

A couple of interesting papers from Constance Steinkuehler related to learning in MMOG (Massively Multiplayers Online Gaming).

Also worth to have a look at:
MUVEES, the Multi-User Virtual Environment Experiential Simulator

Check Point's optimistic pessimist | Newsmakers | CNET News.com

2004-12-13T05:58:00.000-08:00

Check Point's optimistic pessimist | Newsmakers | CNET News.com:

"Yeah, and they got a pretty complicated system.
To catch somebody committing an electronic crime, you need to do it within a very, very short amount of time. If you take two years to investigate a computer crime, there's nothing left around. If you have a pretty complicated system, every small step you make can touch hundreds of places. It's not just one programmer, where you can get into the code and isolate a problem. When you've got hundreds of megabytes of code, there is likely to be lots of bugs, and that's what happened. "

[print version] JBoss eyes front-end technologies | CNET News.com

2004-12-11T13:14:00.000-08:00

[print version] JBoss eyes front-end technologies | CNET News.com

JBoss is considering moving beyond middleware with a framework that will make it easier for companies to develop Web applications in Java.

Extract:
Labourey said one problem with the current Java frameworks is that they are too complicated, which can be a problem if a company only wants to create a simple Web application.

"If a company wants to create just five forms, it takes them four weeks to understand it," Labourey said. "Its very complex to do. ASP.NET is good; too bad it's not in the Java camp."

Article: Using Social Psychology to Motivate Contributions to Online Communities

2004-12-06T02:01:00.000-08:00

Publications - Designing Online Communities to Enhance Participation: Bridging Theory and Practice

Beenen, Gerard, Ling, Kimberly, Wang, Xiaoqing, Chang, Klarissa, Frankowski, Dan, Resnick, Paul, and Robert E Kraut. "Using Social Psychology to Motivate Contributions to Online Communities". To appear in Proceedings of ACM CSCW 2004 Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, Chicago, IL. 2004.

This is a very interesting article about the dynamic of contribution in virtual communities.

Extracts:
---------------
In Gnutella, two-thirds of users share no music files and ten percent provide 87% of all the music.
In open source development four percent of members account for 50 percent of answers on a user-to-user help site, and four percent of developers contribute 88% of new code and 66% of code fixes.

The collective effort model identifies conditions under which people will socially loaf less.
These include
(a) believing that their effort is important to the group’s performance,
(b) believing thattheir contributions to the group are identifiable,
and (c) liking the group they are working with, among others.
---------------

XML over HTTP or SOAP?

2004-12-03T04:12:00.000-08:00

XML over HTTP or SOAP?

----- extract
SOAP is to XML what EJB is to Java. A heavy handed, over applied behemoth. SOAP is usurping the "web service" definition. SOAP is supposed to make systems interoperable, but in *every* deployment, or contemplated deployment I have seen, where interoperability was crucial, SOAP had the effect of reducing interoperability.
-----

Indeed, SOAP, yet another overcomplicated monster generated by the "overcomplexifying maniacs" community operating in the discipline of Computer Sciences.

See also:
Where's the simplicity in Web services? by Martin LaMonica, CNET News.com, October 5, 2004 Has Web services, the technology intended to simplify programming, gotten too complex? A vocal minority wants the more complicated protocols to give it a rest in favor of a simpler approach.

Operating Manual for Social Tools: sociability first, technology second

2004-11-21T13:11:00.000-08:00

Operating Manual for Social Tools: sociability first, technology second

Interesting posting from danah boyd with which I fully agree.

An extract:
No longer can we simply study how the user interacts with the tool, but instead we must consider how people interact with each other and how the tool plays a part in that interaction. Note: people, not users. The tool is not a primary actor in sociability, but a tool that mediates. People should not be framed in terms of the tool, but the tool framed in terms of their use.

[print version] FBI: Hidden threat inside cybercrime | CNET News.com

2004-11-11T12:32:00.000-08:00

[print version] FBI: Hidden threat inside cybercrime | CNET News.com

Software is too expensive to build cheaply...: If Architects Had To Work Like Web Designers...

2004-11-02T06:01:00.000-08:00

Software is too expensive to build cheaply...: If Architects Had To Work Like Web Designers...

What I like about Blogs and Wikis

2004-11-01T09:17:00.000-08:00

What I particularly apreciate is extremely and seamlessly integrated
authoring environement.
Actually, I do not like to think in term of authoring an environment:
It is of the nature of any environment to change and to be transformed.

If we take some analogy, modifying a web page should not be considered
as transforming the walls, but just moving or adding some piece of furniture.

I believe that many technical people still have to understood this.

Thierry