NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #31/NN_1992_31.iso/spool/comp/lang/cplus/18370

Text File | 1992-12-23 | 1.6 KB | 42 lines

Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++
Path: sparky!uunet!microsoft!wingnut!pauljo
From: [e-mail] (Paul Johns)
Subject: Re: Complexity in the eyes...V2.0
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 23 Dec 92 20:35:56 GMT
Organization: Microsoft Corp.:  Redmond, Washington, USA
References: <[e-mail]>
Lines: 31

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] wrote:
>
> Almost a month ago, I tried to start a new thread on the topic
> of "complexity".  I assume that everyone agrees that a goal of
> software engineering should be the reduction of complexity.  But
> what I have recently seen is that the metrics by which complexity
> is measured appear to be very subjective.

An important question to ask is "Complexity as viewed by whom?"

Solutions which are simple and elegant to our users (both end users
and users of our class libraries) are often a pain to implement.
And sometimes expensive, too.

But if a lot of people are going to use your product, the time
spent making it easy for them to use gets repaid MANY times over
when it's easier to use.

There's also a power vs. simplicity issue.  What's the good tradeoff?

In your case, I think that the additional power provided by your
technique is well worth the additional memory and time requirements,
as well as the development time.

I guess I'm arguing that "It's too complex!" is NOT a valid reason for
choosing one implementation over another, while "It's a memory hog!",
"It's a CPU hog!", "It'd take too long to implement!", and "No one
would be able to use it reliably!" might well be valid reasons for
choosing a less-powerful alternative.

// Paul Johns