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--- principles:keep_it_simple_stupid [2025-11-18 16:15] – created veronicamcnally
+++ principles:keep_it_simple_stupid [2025-11-25 10:53] (current) – old revision restored (2021-10-20 21:09) christian
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-Like the candidates of this presidential campaign go from city to city teaching and preaching what they'll do when they get elected, Jesus went from city to city teaching and preaching the gospel of this Kingdom. Acupuncture clinic The real key showed them what the dominion would do by healing every sickness, and every disease among the people.
+====== Keep It Simple Stupid (KISS) ======
-We all choose businesses or services because of seemingly inconsequential details. Such as clean bathrooms at simple . restaurant or becoming given water in bottles while your vehicle is being serviced are small details but produce an troublesome belief. Some of those small details keep you time or money, or simply make you're feeling better. It's in the facts that elevate one business above another.
+===== Variations and Alternative Names =====
-It basically Christmas for scammers and con-artists that bill. We already grasp Medicare could be the biggest target for crooks. 60 Minutes reported back in October that Medicare fraud is a bigger business than illegal drugs! The proposed healthcare program makes Medicare feel like a hot dog stand in comparison.
+  * (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.
-A C.O. knows how to adjust the spine like a chiropractor, nonetheless they don't assume all problems arise from the spine being out of place. In addition manipulate the muscles, the joints, hands and feet, and makes certain that the anatomy for this whole is functioning at full ability. A D.O. generally fix a drawback in 2-5 visits, not really the first time, additionally don't in order to be keep re-occurring to get adjusted.
+**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.
-Of course, you can't simply expect a job to fall into your lap without any effort. Every one of these healthcare jobs will require some training, and faster that beginning from it, far better off you will be. After all, this economy will not wait it is possible to pick up that get. Start training today!
-Since employers do lose some tax advantages in this particular proposal, I suggest we allow them to convert those tax advantages for increase with your Acupuncture clinic pay-scale. Each of these suggested changes would create additional jobs far better salaries.
+===== Context =====
-Submit your own to online search engine directories. Don't overlook professional compensation search engines; they may reach a market market the actual reason ideal for the purpose your site has provide. You can also post comments on different blogs and insert objective into the comment. Particular you write something that's useful to avoid Osteopathic clinic looking like those awful spammers. A long way to find these blogs is by typing a keyword of yours in a search engine like Google and then typing "post comment". Write that in parenthesis. Here's and example: acupuncture "post comment".
+  * [[contexts:Object-Oriented Design]]
+  * [[contexts:Architecture]]
+  * [[contexts:User Interface Design]]
+  * [[contexts:Implementation]]
-It appears that abortions will definitely be covered with tax Osteopathic clinic dollars. This has been up against the law until now. What other questionable services (sex change operations, botox injections, etc) will taxpayers by on the hook for?
+===== Principle Statement =====
-Now, companies that are sought after have to focus extensively during the day. They provide services via phone, email, chat, fax, therefore on. All these different mediums allowed them to take proper their clients easily and conveniently. Besides that, there's also to list documents on a regular and continuous basis. They are not working as paperless companies as substantial compelled to print out receipts, prescriptions and other documents. So, these are among the elements that healthcare services have to help remedy and truth is that are not cheap.
+A simple solution is better than a complex one, even if the solution looks stupid.
-The new roots of your healthcare system must be based on what the public wants - not what our misguided politicians want. Uproot U.S. Healthcare: To Reform U.S. Healthcare, by Deane Waldman, MD MBA, is an efficient and informative read even a real eye-opener to people who believe how the general public has no say as to what happens to your healthcare software program.
-A Defense.O. knows how alter the spine like a chiropractor, however they don't belief that all problems arise off of the spine being out of place. Moreover, they manipulate the muscles, the joints, hands and feet, and guarantees that the anatomy of the whole is functioning at full competence. A D.O. typically fix a breakdown in 2-5 visits, if not the first time, additionally don't to be able to keep re-occurring Acupuncture clinic to get adjusted.
+===== Description =====
-If there isn't any so many millions of men and women without [[https://Library-Redesign.Main.jp/chronologywiki/doku.php?id=jump_sta_t_you_ca_ee_in_healthca_e_with_online_lpn_school|新潟市 整体院]], test establish some form of national healthcare for them and leave the majority of people that satisfied with their healthcare on?
+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.
-As the healthcare reporting system runs using a normal PC, installation and maintenance costs are often kept down. You won't need dedicated support staff on hand to lead you through every little point. You'll just be able to continue serving the needs of your patrons.
+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.
-With all the hoopla during the healthcare debate in america I thought it high time I share my experience that was up close and personal. In the summer of 2008 I became 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're going to Canada for five decades and personally I love the place and every. The healthcare on the other hand, less.
+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]].