Dramatic or boring as it might be, I see the battle between simple and complex play out in our lovely world, pretty much on a daily basis. I am, and has always been, decidedly on the side of simple. Simple is, well, simpler, with less moving parts, increased reliability, easier to understand and repair, and, to me, much more elegant. Be it lines of code, moving mechanical parts of a machine, the design of a child’s game or an essay with fewer words but more meaning, simple always wins.
I was always of this viewpoint ever since I started programming in university. I learned the term while learning to program in machine language: minimal instruction set. Of course the technicals amongst us would be simply coding in machine language, but when you need to add oodles of lines of code just to be simple, well then, it ceases to define the term. More functionality will always mean more moving parts, but only up to a point, after which you define the term excessive.
Who has not heard the term “Keep it Simple, Stupid”, or more lovingly, KISS. Yet we pay mere lip service to it. Cars are notorious for adding unnecessary gadgets and therefore decrease the reliability of the vehicle. A neighbour had bought a 7 series BMW sedan. It runs very well, but all the fiddly and unnecessary bits were all going to pot. The designers should have stayed with simple stuff and therefore increase the car’s reliability. To fix all the fiddly bits would be prohibitively expensive, so they choose to ignore the flawed details. Maybe this is the way evolution occurs with inanimate objects: features simply die and are not used, ghostly reminders of fiddly bits that used to work but now do not.
The corollary to simple is complex. This is not complex for added useful functionality’s sake but complex to keep up with the next guy’s fiddly bits. It seems like the more fiddly bits one has the more sophisticated one is perceived. That is until something breaks. A broken fiddly bit is the sign, for those that want these fiddly bits, to throw out the damn thing and buy a new version. This plan must have been invented by the manufacturing industry to increase sales. They give us more fiddly bits that we think are more useful and therefore want, then the fiddly bits break or quickly become obsolete, and this forces us to buy the newer version. Rinse and repeat.
Welcome to the consumer society. Fiddly bits is a sure sign of our use and throw away mentality. Does more complex functionality that you know will eventually break make us feel better about ourselves? To me this seems excessive at best and downright destructive most of the time. Design an object for a set functionality, and make it as simple as possible for this level of functionality. Ensure this level of functionality is indeed useful and not excessive. Do I really need to surf the internet while driving on the highway? Not only is it unsafe and illegal but it is not necessary, no matter who says this feature is the bees’ knees (great).
We all have choices in our lives. We should not be swayed by what others impress upon us, especially from those that we do not know, will never get to know and therefore will never respect. What happened to looking at a product and making up your own mind if it is worthy of being purchased? This must be out of fashion today. There will always be the fashion forward people that feel they lead the way on whatever genre but really one need not follow their lead, for they might walk you all off a cliff. Is this where you want to go, and is this the person you want to follow?
It is true that not all old stuff is good stuff. Often times functionality is lacking, without which you cannot adequately use the product. More often the old stuff is more than adequate and is built stronger to boot. New stuff, especially Made in China stuff, is cheap in design and build, costing you much more because it breaks before you get your money’s worth out of it. This is simply false economy, pure and simple. Stay away from this stuff. I and many others loath this type of product.
For me, simple is better. Far fewer moving parts, higher reliability. The parts you do have are serviceable and therefore fixable, and are of higher quality. Old stuff inherently has many less fiddly bits. Functionality that you will never use is a waste in purchase price, upkeep and contributes to increased unreliability. It is those broken fiddly bits that nag on you to throw out the product and buy a new one, replacing broken fiddly bits with new. Do you notice the unending treadmill on which we walk. It need not be so, really.
