🪢🎬 Simple Made Easy

Priya Raman has sent this talk to every product manager she has worked with, and I was the last to watch it. A conference keynote from 2011, an hour, by a programming-language designer. I watched it on a Saturday afternoon, four days before a go or no-go meeting, to understand why she keeps saying no to things I think are small.

The whole talk hangs on two words that I had been using as one:

• Simple is about the thing itself: one strand, not twisted together with anything else. You can check it by looking.
• Easy is about me: near to hand, familiar, already installed. It depends on who is asking.

He says we pick easy and call it simple, and that the bill arrives later, when the strands we braided together cannot be changed one at a time. He has an old word for the braiding and I have started using it in my head. The definition is in 🔤 Simple versus easy, etymology included.

What it explained about Priya

• When I asked for the digest to also mute an exception, I was asking her to tie two things together because the screen was nearby. Easy for me. Not simple for her.
• Her question in design review, what does this know about that it should not, is the talk in nine words.
• She is not being slow. She is declining to make next year's change impossible.

Where I do not follow him: half the examples are about programming constructs I cannot judge. I took the argument and left the list.

After Watching

• Tell Priya I watched it, and which objection I now understand
• Split the digest and the mute into two separate asks in the spec
• Stop writing simple in a spec when I mean quick
• Watch the follow-up talk she recommended

Concepts & Permanent Notes: 📰 Choose Boring Technology · 💎 The structure of a system explains more than the people in it · 💎 Reality has more detail than any plan can hold