From 20y experience and CS degree, I see software engineering as a constant struggle against accidental complexity. Like quicksand, every movement you make will pull you deeper, even swimming in the right direction. And like entropy, it governs all things (there are no subfields that are free of complexity). It even seems impossible to give a meaningful, useful definition, perhaps by necessity. All is dark.
But now and then, something beautiful happens. Something that used to be dreadful, becomes "solved". Not in the mathematical strict sense, but some abstraction or some tool eliminates an entire class of issues, and once you know it you can barely imagine living without it. That's why I keep coming back to it, I think.
As a species, I think we are in the infancy stages of software engineering, and perhaps CS as well. There's still lots of opportunity to find better abstractions, big & small.
Wonderful article, thanks for sharing. These complexity definitions and the connection to linguistic complexity are useful. Also enjoyed this line:
> The cognitive complexity of a function can only be determined by the reader, and only caring about the reader can enable the writer to improve the learning experience.
From 20y experience and CS degree, I see software engineering as a constant struggle against accidental complexity. Like quicksand, every movement you make will pull you deeper, even swimming in the right direction. And like entropy, it governs all things (there are no subfields that are free of complexity). It even seems impossible to give a meaningful, useful definition, perhaps by necessity. All is dark.
But now and then, something beautiful happens. Something that used to be dreadful, becomes "solved". Not in the mathematical strict sense, but some abstraction or some tool eliminates an entire class of issues, and once you know it you can barely imagine living without it. That's why I keep coming back to it, I think.
As a species, I think we are in the infancy stages of software engineering, and perhaps CS as well. There's still lots of opportunity to find better abstractions, big & small.
Wonderful article, thanks for sharing. These complexity definitions and the connection to linguistic complexity are useful. Also enjoyed this line:
> The cognitive complexity of a function can only be determined by the reader, and only caring about the reader can enable the writer to improve the learning experience.