https://www.vishalbhoriwal.me/tags/engineering-philosophy/Recent content in Engineering-Philosophy on Vishal BhoriwalHugoenWed, 20 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000https://www.vishalbhoriwal.me/blog/simplicity/Wed, 20 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000https://www.vishalbhoriwal.me/blog/simplicity/<p>There&rsquo;s a question from Extreme Programming that I keep returning to:</p> <blockquote> <p><em>What is the simplest thing that could possibly work?</em></p> </blockquote> <p>It sounds almost naive. But it&rsquo;s one of the most useful filters I&rsquo;ve found when designing systems.</p> <h2 id="the-complexity-trap">The Complexity Trap</h2> <p>Engineers — myself included — tend to over-engineer. We anticipate scale, future requirements, and edge cases that may never materialize. We reach for distributed systems before we&rsquo;ve saturated a single machine. We add abstraction layers before we have two concrete cases to abstract.</p>