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Kindle Notes & Highlights
If software developers should always be thinking about design issues, and reducing complexity is the most important element of software design, then software developers should always be thinking about complexity. This book is about how to use complexity to guide the design of software throughout its lifetime.
Change amplification: The first symptom of complexity is that a seemingly simple change requires code modifications in many different places.
Sometimes an approach that requires more lines of code is actually simpler, because it reduces cognitive load.
One of the most important goals of good design is for a system to be obvious.
Complexity is caused by two things: dependencies and obscurity.
Many organizations encourage a tactical mindset, focused on getting features working as quickly as possible. However, if you want a good design, you must take a more strategic approach where you invest time to produce clean designs and fix problems.
When you get in a crunch it will be tempting to put off cleanups until after the crunch is over. However, this is a slippery slope; after the current crunch there will almost certainly be another one, and another after that. Once you start delaying design improvements, it’s easy for the delays to become permanent and for your culture to slip into the tactical approach.
