Kicking the Complexity Habit
summary
Argues that complexity is the default and many familiar practices act as short‑term painkillers, hiding root causes rather than fixing them; uses the shifting the burden systems archetype to show quick fixes (IDEs, build automation, TDD, enterprise mandates, Conway’s law) worsen long‑term entropy. Recommends measuring cognitive load, creating shared idioms and consistency, using set‑based experiments (try 2–4 JVM languages in parallel) and designing for a short change event horizon. Gives a concrete win: a single‑method Java HTTP server and Boeing’s three‑way implementation pattern.
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chapters (19)
- 0:00Introduction
- 4:27Identifying Complexity
- 6:18What is Complexity
- 8:30James Lewis
- 19:29Painkillers
- 21:01Enterprise mandates
- 22:26Design undirected local choices
- 23:24Selfdirected selforganizing
- 25:16Local choices
- 26:05Masking complexity
- 28:23Closure
- 28:55Build Automation
- 29:49TDD
- 30:47Process
- 31:49Organization
- 40:40Tale of Two Cities
- 42:14Less Scale Go the Snail
- 45:04Consistency at Scale
- 47:25Questions
