Wow, that one really resonated with me. I hadn't really thought about how to put simplicity into perspective quite like that. One of the things that frustrated me about Windows was that there was always about 7 different ways to do the same thing (or get to the same place) and that lead to amazing time wasting discussions in attempting to support customers remotely.
Google has (had? I suspect they still do this) company wide 'fixit' days where people would fix bugs for prizes and what not. I suspect a 'delete-it' (or 'simplify-it') might be a useful exercise as well.
We still have fixits and we also have delete-it's as well. The team I'm currently on has Delete Tuesdays where everyone competes to delete unused code or config options. It's very satisfying.
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Wow, that one really resonated with me. I hadn't really thought about how to put simplicity into perspective quite like that. One of the things that frustrated me about Windows was that there was always about 7 different ways to do the same thing (or get to the same place) and that lead to amazing time wasting discussions in attempting to support customers remotely.
Google has (had? I suspect they still do this) company wide 'fixit' days where people would fix bugs for prizes and what not. I suspect a 'delete-it' (or 'simplify-it') might be a useful exercise as well.
We still have fixits and we also have delete-it's as well. The team I'm currently on has Delete Tuesdays where everyone competes to delete unused code or config options. It's very satisfying.