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Weekly Reflection #1 - Simplicity, Complexity, and Design
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Each week, I share one insight. One piece of wisdom. One question to reflect on. (and a little Lagniappe) InsightI’ve never seen a codebase accidentally get simpler. Every “temporary” workaround, every “we’ll refactor later,” every “just one more feature” adds up. Complications tend to creep in. Slowly. Quietly. It starts small, many times unnoticed. It’s not malicious. It’s entropy. Without deliberate effort, all systems drift toward chaos. The teams that stay in flow aren’t the ones who never deal with complexity. Complexity emerges over time. They’re the ones who refuse to accept 'it’s complicated' as an answer. Letting complicated creep in is a choice. So is insisting on simplicity. WisdomIn 2024, I had the pleasure of interviewing John Ousterhout, author of A Philosophy of Software Design, on the Book Overflow podcast. One of my favorite insights from our conversation was on the importance of iterative design to manage complexity: “We can’t fully design a system up front - the systems become too complicated, it’s too hard to visualize the consequences of our design decisions at the beginning… But the other extreme of doing no design is even worse. The sweet spot is somewhere in the middle where you spend some time doing design but also recognize you’re not going to get it right, and so you make sure… you better leave time to also go back and do major revisions on things.” This is why Ousterhout advocates “designing it twice” because you can’t fully get it right the first time. The complexity you’re fighting isn’t a sign of failure. It’s the nature of the work. Check out the Book Overflow interview here. ReflectionWhat is one thing you’re no longer tolerating that you would have tolerated two years ago? Lagniappe (a little something extra)
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Weekly Reflections Newsletter
Practical insights on platform engineering, developer experience, and building teams that ship. Each issue is written to be useful, actionable, and applicable. No filler, no promotions-only emails. Enter your email and sign up for free right now.
Each week, I share one insight. One piece of wisdom. One question to reflect on. (and a little Lagniappe) Insight Most things in life are out of our control. This is only exacerbated for those of us who work in complex systems. We can't predict the next outage, re-org, or technology shift. What we can control is our ability to respond to spontaneous changes. In Zen, there is a concept called "mushin", a mind free from distraction, able to respond fluidly to whatever arises. When we cultivate...
Each week, I share one insight. One piece of wisdom. One question to reflect on. (and a little Lagniappe) Insight Protect the simplicity of your foundational systems. I’ve been reading Designing Data-Intensive Applications for Book Overflow. I can’t believe I hadn’t read this book sooner. It’s a goldmine of practical wisdom with a deep exploration of tradeoffs. One insight that stood out is that the larger and more reliable a complex system needs to be, the simpler its building blocks must...
Each week, I share one insight. One piece of wisdom. One question to reflect on. (and a little Lagniappe) Insight Our attention is precious. It is a finite resource. When I struggle to make progress on a larger goal, it’s because my attention is spread too thin, my brain is overloaded with context switching costs. The antidote is twofold: reduce what you’re paying attention to, and compress the feedback loop on what remains. Ship something valuable. Learn. Repeat. Wisdom “All art is a work in...