🪢Simple versus easy

Rich Hickey's distinction, from the talk 🎬 Simple Made Easy (paraphrase, not quotation):

• Simple is about the thing itself. One role, one concept, not braided together with others. It can be judged from outside.
• Easy is about us. Near to hand, familiar, already installed. It depends on who is asking.

The two come apart all the time. The easy option is often the tangled one, and untangling is hard work.

Origin: simple is from Latin simplex, literally one fold: sim- (one, as in semel, once) and the root of plicare, to fold. Its opposite, complex, is braided together. Easy comes through Old French aisié, from aise, comfort or elbow room. Hickey takes it back to Latin adjacens, lying near. Dictionaries call that derivation likely but uncertain.

Why I watched it. It is Priya Raman's favourite talk, and I watched it to understand her objections. When she says a design is not simple she does not mean it is hard to build. She means two things have been folded into one and will have to be changed together for ever.

I had been hearing this is difficult when she was saying this is braided. It saved us at least one argument.