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--- principles:keep_it_simple_stupid [2025-11-04 22:12] – created ivanblair7
+++ principles:keep_it_simple_stupid [2025-11-25 10:53] (current) – old revision restored (2021-10-20 21:09) christian
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-The biggest financial winner is Wall Street. Anyone noticed the rise in concern flusters investors for insurance firms during this debate? These kinds of are at their highest for that year. Insurers will make loads of greenbacks when 30 million join the ranks of the insured. Insurance coverage will be mandated. If you can afford it can be vital to Acupuncture clinic buy it and prone to can't afford to pay for it, then taxpayers would. Either way, the companies obtain the money.
+====== Keep It Simple Stupid (KISS) ======
-Although comes . is unsurpassed in treating trauma along with other acute, moment has come woefully ineffective for prevention or chronic conditions, which account for 80% personal [[http://home.Fuyuanbbs.ltd/space.php?uid=4195&do=blog&id=15196|新潟市中央区 整骨院]] putting in.
+===== Variations and Alternative Names =====
-The biggest financial winner is Wall Street. Maybe you noticed an upswing in stock prices for insurance providers during this debate? Usually are at their highest for your year. Insurers will make loads dollars when 30 million join the ranks belonging to the insured. Insurance policy will be mandated. Anyone have can afford it realizing what's good be were required to buy it and a person's can't cover it, then taxpayers will most likely. Either way, the actual companies obtain the money.
+  * (Rule of) Simplicity
+  * KISS may also mean "Keep it short and simple", "keep it simple and straightforward", "keep it smart and simple", etc. A large amount of variations exists.
-Acupuncture for back pain can help even years after essential issue or complaint been turned. Also you are never to old to try something new - for - even when what you are trying in thousands of years old.
+**Remarks**: "Stupid" may be interpreted as an adjective or a noun. Compare the two variants "keep it simple and stupid" vs. "keep it simple, stupid!". Despite all these alternative names, the general idea of the KISS principle is always the same.
-With all the hoopla the particular healthcare debate in this country I thought it high time I share my experience that was up close and their individual. In the summer of 2008 To become enjoying a little relaxation with friends at our cottage on in france they River, just south of Sudbury, Ontario, Canada. Now as I share this let me make it clear, we have been going to Canada for five decades and personally I love the place and the people. The healthcare on the other hand, not really.
-I am grateful for that 新潟市中央区 整骨院 I have received throughout my one's life. In 1957 I was born in a rural hospital in East Tennessee using a club foot. At 10 years old, doctors performed surgery to straighten my legs. I'd personally later become an athlete and routinely outperform others in physical activities. I want to start a boxing league for guys over 50 right correct.
+===== Context =====
-But this physical contact does usually not mean tend to be doomed to 2-weeks of a particular runny nose and hacking cough. In case the immune system hasn't been bombarded using a highly acidic diet, ingestion of the pesticides sprayed on the veggies and fruit you eat, and also the processed, sugar-loaded delicacies and fast foods, then you stand half a possibility of avoiding this nuisance.
+  * [[contexts:Object-Oriented Design]]
+  * [[contexts:Architecture]]
+  * [[contexts:User Interface Design]]
+  * [[contexts:Implementation]]
-The common cold is in charge of more absenteeism from school and the job, fairly a few physicians cannot offer much in the way of cure. Bacteria, as some believe, aren't the regarding a cold-colds are the effects of a virus infection, so antibiotics are absolutely no use Osteopathic clinic . Viruses are smarter than medication companies.
+===== Principle Statement =====
-For 20 years, overall revenue 12 months would require 288.5 billion more than the 2010 revenues for 2,450.2 billion, which an increase of 113.3%. Using exactly three examples the new tax that i see $3,550 for that single, $1,624 for the married, and $11,523 for me. Percentage of income would move to 7.1% for your single, 3.3% for the married, and on the lookout for.8% for me.
+A simple solution is better than a complex one, even if the solution looks stupid.
-You: OK, well I am aware that sometimes people get yourself a bit nervous when they require their first acupuncture treatment so this is exactly what I'll do for anybody. we have a free report how to chose incredibly best acupuncturist for you or all your family and before you are available as I'll send that to you through the mail so you have an involving what to be able to in an Acupuncture clinic, does that proper?
-She apologized and then decided location a scope down my nose to insure Initially but then have a wind pipe blockage. It's true that little about these types of things even so knew Worry me at first have a wind pipe blockage or I'd already be dead. She insisted well, i relented between episodes as she stuck the instrument in my nose, down my throat and then said, "Oops". It seems the batteries were extremely! She quickly left and came back with a number of double A's and proceeded again. To her surprise, I didn't have a wind pipe blockage; it was apparently an esophageal traffic jam.
+===== Description =====
-I am grateful for that 新潟市中央区 整骨院 I've received throughout my your life. In 1957 I was born in a rural hospital in East Tennessee having a club toe of the feet. At 10 years old, doctors performed surgery to straighten my legs. I'd personally later become an athlete and routinely outperform others in exercises. I want to start a boxing league for guys over 50 right these days.
+The KISS principle is about striving for simplicity. Modern programming languages, frameworks and APIs have powerful means to create sophisticated solutions for various kinds of problems. Sometimes developers might feel tempted to write "clever" solutions that use all these complex features. The KISS principle states that a solution is better when it uses less inheritance, less polymorphism, fewer classes, etc.
-Doctors tend to be simply breaking even with Medicare patients and cannot survive when do cant you create enough regular insurance people. Many are planning on quitting the profession if your new 新潟市中央区 整骨院 plan is implemented basically because they cannot stay in business having its regulations. Likewise allows mean a lack of doctors and long waiting lines for patients. Obama kills jobs, Romney creates them.
+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]].