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principles:keep_it_simple_stupid [2025-11-04 21:17] – created ivanblair7principles:keep_it_simple_stupid [2025-11-25 10:53] (current) – old revision restored (2021-10-20 21:09) christian
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-Your honeymoon in Costa rica can be as cheap as complying with environment, absolutely no doubt discover find incredibly beautiful places to spend unforgettable memories of your honeymoon in Costa Rica.+====== Keep It Simple Stupid (KISS) ======
  
-If getting into to be fair is usually still a 3% increase for all, but the proportion of salary is drastically totally different. The numbers demonstrate to that the flat percentage increase across the Osteopathic clinic board raises the difference between your percentage of revenue the median household pays and things i pay. Therefore, the flat tax application does improve higher income earner shoulder more of your burden.+===== Variations and Alternative Names =====
  
-Apollo Munich offers comprehensive plans which will take good a family's healthcare needs and give them adequate coverage for all medical things that are apt to arise. It puts over the policy wordings on the place of they in very transparent as well as simple terms. To talk about funny also buy and renew plans on its web pages. All the plans are designed t provide all-round family healthcare coverage. Apollo Munich offers mediclaim policies that are engineered to give all-round protection to familiesThere are various of policies which works with the exactly the same.+  * (Rule of) Simplicity 
 +  * KISS may also mean "Keep it short and simple", "keep it simple and straightforward", "keep it smart and simple", etcA large amount of variations exists.
  
-I have spent long period in tutoringThroughout that time I have noticed that you 5 consistent habits and/or traits that successful students demonstrateThe kids who embrace these practices are more likely to be successful in their career path than others that don'tIf you implement these practices inside your education its going to be richermore dynamic, and very much more valuable.+**Remarks**: "Stupid" may be interpreted as an adjective or nounCompare the two variants "keep it simple and stupid" vs"keep it simple, stupid!"Despite all these alternative namesthe general idea of the KISS principle is always the same.
  
-Do unwanted weight to have got the power in conjunction with your chosen doctor/doctors concerning decisions about your and to not have some government bureaucrat getting between as well as your generate? 
  
-Many people believe that chiropractic care is hurting. However, very few treatments to succumb to this category, and the time usually only at first.until aggravation "kinks" get worked inside. Most who receive such treatment describe it as relaxing - like a massage. Many patients express their eagerness for another visit while it helps Acupuncture clinic in order to alleviate pain as opposed to causing it also.+===== Context =====
  
-It could be seen as just yesterday that the Obama administration and the liberal wing of congress was singing from the tree tops at how much the healthcare bill would save all that you have the while providing us better care and insuring more People in america. Wouldn't it be great to have a very simplistic path and almost by magic insure all the nations uninsured and give your lower cost of healthcare all while not cutting any services and giving everyone a better of healthcare? Does this sound simple to be true? Not in the minds of your elitist liberals that populate the administration and the nation's lawmakers. This is just another case of liberal favorite anecdotes. The common sense majority recognises that "if it sounds too good to be true then".well you know the rest.+  * [[contexts:Object-Oriented Design]] 
 +  * [[contexts:Architecture]] 
 +  * [[contexts:User Interface Design]] 
 +  * [[contexts:Implementation]]
  
-Virginia is a great place to visit to school through. The weather is great, the beaches are gorgeous, and the cost of living is affordable. Should you be a student looking to go to medical school, then Virginia is superb place in order to. Not only because of the above reasons, furthermore because Virginia has five medical schools in the site. This is an awful lot! It's neighbor states only have between one and 4.+===== Principle Statement =====
  
-If ensure that fully increase benefits of fertility acupuncture, have some lifestyle alter. Give up your vices and to jump in a healthy habit of eating proper. This is also the right time and energy to get into some proper exercises.+A simple solution is better than a complex one, even if the solution looks stupid
  
-Unknown if you at period and not for within month after my injury had occurred , I learned that your chosen Canadian , I'll phone him constantly Bill, employed for the same company as myself, had suffered the identical injury about the same time as my verizon prepaid phone. When I asked about him exactly what he was doing about it, his supervisor advised me that he was to your waiting list for an MRI try. He told me so it wasn't scheduled until mid-January 2009. Produce a long story short, the essence of this story is: by time Bill had his MRI test, We seen my regular doctor, been into a specialist (an orthopedic), had an MRI test, in order to the specialist and moving on and was approximately half way or more through my physical therapy sessions at the doctor's enterprise. 
  
-Polls show that 85% of Americans are happy with their insurance. Virtually all these individuals are going in order to losers. It really is not be devastating, checking out a financial impact. Premiums will go up, services will go down, lines will be longer, doctor visits will be shorter, and will more resemble countries with socialized medicine. Switch can connect to medical care, maybe it end up being worth it. Time will discern.+===== Description =====
  
-What really separates the g of Osteopathic clinic Medicine even with an N.D. is the use of hands-on manipulative medicine and the view how the body is really a single unitrather than organ systems that work independently of each other. The T.O. looks at the body and medical of another person in an added holistic way than an M.D.+The KISS principle is about striving for simplicityModern programming languages, frameworks and APIs have powerful means to create sophisticated solutions for various kinds of problemsSometimes developers might feel tempted to write "clever" solutions that use all these complex featuresThe KISS principle states that a solution is better when it uses less inheritanceless polymorphism, fewer classes, etc.
  
-If you liked this information and you would certainly such as to obtain even more facts concerning [[http://Medifore.Co.jp/bbs/board.php?bo_table=free&wr_id=4715625|新潟市中央区 腰痛]] kindly see our own web site.+A solution that follows the KISS principle might look boring or even "stupid" but simple and understandable. The KISS principle states that there is no value in a solution being "clever" but being easily understandable. 
 + 
 +This does not mean that features like inheritance and polymorphism should not be used at all. Rather they should only be used when they are necessary or there is some substantial advantage. 
 + 
 +===== Rationale ===== 
 + 
 +A simpler solution is better than a complex one because simple solutions are easier to maintain. This includes increased readability, understandability, and changeability. Furthermore, writing simple code is less error-prone. 
 + 
 +The advantage of simplicity is even more significant when the person who maintains the software is not the one who once wrote it. The maintainer might also be less familiar with sophisticated programming language features. So simple and stupid programs are easier to maintain because the maintainer needs less time to understand them and is less likely to introduce further defects. 
 + 
 +One reason to create more complex code is to make it more flexible to accommodate further requirements. But one cannot know how to make it flexible or if that flexibility will be ever needed. 
 + 
 +"When you make your code more flexible or sophisticated than it needs to be, you over-engineer it. Some do this because they believe they know their system's future requirements. The reason that it's best to make a design more flexible or sophisticated today is to accommodate the needs of tomorrow. That sounds reasonable, if you happen to be a psychic." - Refactoring To Patterns - Joshua Kerievsky. 
 + 
 +Another reason to create more complex code is to make optimizations. An optimized code is a more complex code. Pareto principle applies also in code: a program spends most of the time in a small portion of the code, so it will be wise to concentrate the effort to optimize only that part of the code. Another best practice is to follow the  
 +"Three rules of optimization": (1. Don't, 2. Don't... Yet, 3. Profile before optimizing), which make sense: to optimize only the code with performance problems. (First author: Michael A. Jackson) 
 + 
 + 
 +===== Strategies ===== 
 + 
 +This is a very general principle, so there is a large variety of possible strategies to adhere more to this principle largely depending on the given design problem: 
 + 
 +  * Avoid inheritance, polymorphism, dynamic binding and other complicated OOP concepts. Use delegation and simple if-constructs instead. 
 +  * Avoid low-level optimization of algorithms, especially when involving Assembler, bit-operations, and pointers. Slower implementations will work just fine. 
 +  * Use simple brute-force solutions instead of complicated algorithms. Slower algorithms will work in the first place. 
 +  * Avoid numerous classes and methods as well as large code blocks (see [[More Is More Complex]]) 
 +  * For slightly unrelated but rather small pieces of functionality use private methods instead of an additional class. 
 +  * Avoid general solutions needing parameterization. A specific solution will suffice. 
 +  * ... 
 + 
 + 
 +===== Caveats ===== 
 + 
 +See section [[#contrary principles]]. 
 + 
 + 
 +===== Origin ===== 
 + 
 +The principle was coined by the American engineer Kelly Johnson referring to the requirement that a military aircraft should be repairable with a limited set of tools under combat conditions ((Ben R. Rich: //[[http://www.nap.edu/html/biomems/cjohnson.pdf|Clarence Leonard (Kelly) Johnson 1910—1990: A Biographical Memoir]]//)). 
 + 
 +The principle of striving for simple solutions sometimes is also called "(rule of) simplicity"((Eric S. Raymond: //[[http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/taoup/html/ch01s06.html#id2877917|The Art of Unix Programming]]//)) which was also prominently stated by Tony Hoare in his Turing Award lecture: "I conclude that there are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. The first method is far more difficult."((Tony Hoare: //[[http://awards.acm.org/images/awards/140/articles/4622167.pdf|The Emperor’s Old Clothes / The 1980 ACM Turing Award Lecture]]//)) 
 + 
 + 
 +===== Evidence ===== 
 +/* Comment out what is not applicable and explain the rest: */ 
 +/*  * [[wiki:Proposed]]*/ 
 +/*  * [[wiki:Questioned]]*/ 
 + 
 + 
 +[[wiki:Accepted]]: This principle is widely known and accepted in practice. See for example Jargon File: //[[http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/K/KISS-Principle.html|KISS Principle]]// 
 + 
 +[[wiki:Examined]]: While the preference for simple solutions can be considered trivially intuitive, there has been some work relating simplicity or rather complexity and certain quality attributes. But as there is no universally applicable complexity metric and not even a commonly agreed upon clear definition of simplicity, research is bound to examine certain aspects of KISS independently.  
 + 
 +The following hypotheses can be stated: 
 +  - Simpler solutions are faster to implement. 
 +  - Simpler solutions yield fewer implementation faults (which reduces testing effort). 
 +  - Simpler solutions are easier to maintain, i.e. detecting and correcting defects is more effective and efficient. 
 +  - Simpler solutions yield more reliable software, i.e. fewer defects show up after releasing the software. 
 + 
 +All these hypotheses can be examined with respect to different complexity metrics. 
 + 
 +Hypothesis 1 is true by definition. If the solution cannot be implemented quickly, it is not simple.  
 + 
 +Though hypotheses 2 and 3 are not true by definition but they can be regarded intuitively clear. Nevertheless, there is some research. In ((Virginia R. Gibson and James A. Senn: //[[http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=62073|System Structure and Software Maintenance Performance]]//)) a system was improved in two steps resulting in three variants of the same system. Several metrics show that the improvements reduced complexity. 36 programmers with varying experience conducted three different maintenance tasks and their performance was measured. The results indicate that the improvements also improved maintainability. Several other studies support the correlation between complexity and maintainability((Chris F. Kemerer: //[[http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF02249043?LI=true|Software complexity and software maintenance: A survey of empirical research]]//)). 
 + 
 +Furthermore, software cost estimation techniques are partly based on complexity judgments((Barry W. Boehm: //Software Engineering Economics//, IEEE)). So complexity---although this normally relates the complexity of the problem and not to the complexity of the solution---is a known cost factor which may be accounted to maintenance. 
 + 
 +Lastly, hypothesis 4 is likely to be false. Several studies relating complexity metrics and post-release reliability show that module size in lines of code predicts reliability at least as good as the McCabe metric (also called cyclomatic complexity) ((see Albert Endres, Dieter Rombach: //A Handbook of Software and Systems Engineering//, p. 168ff.)). Assuming cyclomatic complexity correctly depicts the complexity of a module, reliability should not the reason for applying KISS. 
 + 
 + 
 +===== Relations to Other Principles ===== 
 + 
 +==== Generalizations ==== 
 + 
 +==== Specializations ==== 
 + 
 +  * [[More Is More Complex]] (MIMC): KISS states that one should strive for simplicity. MIMC makes this more concrete stating that more of anything (methods, classes, lines of code, ...) increases complexity. 
 +  * [[You Ain't Gonna Need It]] (YAGNI) 
 +  * [[Rule of Parsimony]] 
 +  * [[Rule of Robustness]] 
 + 
 +==== Contrary Principles ==== 
 + 
 +Note that many principles are contrary to KISS. This means that it is worthwhile to consider KISS when considering one of those. Nevertheless this does not mean that this is true the other way around. When considering KISS, one wouldn't want to consider all principles that have complexity as a disadvantage. So here are those needing consideration: 
 + 
 +  * **[[Generalization Principle]] (GP)**: This is the directly converse principle. A generally applicable solution typically is not simple anymore. 
 +  * **[[Murphy's Law]] (ML)**: The ultimate reason behind KISS is to increase maintainability and reduce the introduction of defects. But following KISS blindly by always using the simplest solution may also lead to //reduced// maintainability when Murphy's Law is not considered. 
 +  * [[Model Principle]] (MP): There are often simpler ways to build a software system than to model and mirror the real-world behavior, which frequently means having more objects and more complicated structures. Nevertheless, it is advisable to do so anyway. 
 + 
 +==== Complementary Principles ==== 
 + 
 +==== Principle Collections ==== 
 + 
 +{{page>collections:OOD Principle Language#Box}} 
 +{{page>collections:Unix Philosophy (Eric S. Raymond)#Box}} 
 + 
 + 
 +===== Examples ===== 
 + 
 +==== Example 1: Fuzzy Simplicity ==== 
 + 
 +Simplicity is a blurry, partly subjective measure. Sometimes it is difficult to tell what is simpler. The following example shows that: 
 + 
 +<code java> 
 +public String weekday1(int dayOfWeek) 
 +
 +    switch (dayOfWeek) 
 +    { 
 +        case 1: return "Monday"; 
 +        case 2: return "Tuesday"; 
 +        case 3: return "Wednesday"; 
 +        case 4: return "Thursday"; 
 +        case 5: return "Friday"; 
 +        case 6: return "Saturday"; 
 +        case 7: return "Sunday"; 
 +        default: throw new IllegalArgumentException("dayOfWeek must be in range 1..7"); 
 +    } 
 +
 + 
 +public String weekday2(int dayOfWeek) 
 +
 +    if ((dayOfWeek < 1) || (dayOfWeek > 7)) 
 +        throw new IllegalArgumentException("dayOfWeek must be in range 1..7"); 
 + 
 +    final String[] weekdays = { 
 +        "Monday", "Tuesday", "Wednesday", "Thursday", "Friday", "Saturday", "Sunday"}; 
 + 
 +    return weekdays[dayOfWeek-1]; 
 +
 +</code> 
 + 
 +Both methods do exactly the same thing. They return a string representing the weekday. Just the implementation is different. Both versions may be seen as simpler than the other depending on the view taken. ''weekday2'' has less statements and less execution branches. Complexity metrics measuring these aspects (e.g. the [[glossary:cyclomatic complexity]]) will therefore prefer ''weekday2''
 + 
 +On the other hand ''weekdays1'' uses less language features (just switch, return, and exceptions whereas ''weekdays2'' needs if, arrays, arithmetic, return, and exceptions). Furthermore in ''weekdays1'' the relation between input and output can be seen directly and it's clear how it works by just seeing the method. But for understanding ''weekday2'' there are more details to think about. This is especially true for the range check at the beginning and the index computation in the ''return'' statement. Clearly this is not particularly difficult but these are aspects which are more difficult than in the other version of the method. 
 + 
 +So it's not objectively clear which of the two implementations KISS prefers without saying which complexity metric to apply. But this ambiguity is not a problem since principles are not meant to be unambiguous and objective. Eventually a human developer has to decide which solution to implement and the principles only give guidelines. 
 +===== Description Status ===== 
 +/* Choose one of the following and comment out the rest: */ 
 +/*[[wiki:Stub]]*/ 
 +[[wiki:Incomplete]] 
 +/*[[wiki:Complete]]*/ 
 + 
 +===== Further Reading ===== 
 + 
 +  * [[wiki>KeepItSimple]] 
 +  * [[wp>KISS principle]] 
 +  * [[http://people.apache.org/~fhanik/kiss.html|Apache: KISS]] 
 +  * [[http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/taoup/html/ch01s06.html#id2877917|The Art of Unix Programming: Rule of Simplicity]] 
 + 
 +===== Discussion ===== 
 + 
 +Discuss this wiki article and the principle on the corresponding [[talk:principles:Keep It Simple Stupid|talk page]].
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