Getting to Simple

[Paul Tarvydas]

http://alarmingdevelopment.org/?p=766#more-766

[Paul Morrison]

Thanks for the kind words, Paul!  This also seems to tie in well with many of the points brought up in the topic started by Ron Lewis titled "Simple Software..." -  https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/flow-based-programming/ee5uTVh4Bhk

On Monday, May 13, 2013 8:27:08 PM UTC-4, Paul Tarvydas wrote:

http://alarmingdevelopment.org/?p=766#more-766

[Ron Lewis]

So true.

To much to learn to do anything. But then, I see software and languages touted as being "lightweight". Sounds like lightweight means simple and easy. But from http://www.thefreedictionary.com/lightweight, seems to mean (adjective) "without seriousness of purpose; trivial or trifling." What I think it really means is lacking in features and capabilities. 

So, lacking in features attracts us maybe because when you get all the clutter out of our way, we can still do what we want to do, and we don't care that we are not able to do what we don't want to do, anyway. Fewer capabilities means fewer things to learn to do our task.

JavaScript has been called a lightweight language (see http://www.w3schools.com/js/js_intro.asp). And JavaScript doesn't come with file reading and writing capability. You have to get or write a plugin for that. And the plugin won't be written in JavaScript.

We see that "lightweight" can also be a negative.