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Finding the right balance: Simplification vs Optimization

Maybe you don’t care, but there is a reason I named my blog the ‘Art of Simplicity’. As an application architect I always think about the following quotes when building out an architecture

“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” — Leonardo da Vinci

“Perfection is Achieved Not When There Is Nothing More to Add, But When There Is Nothing Left to Take Away” – Antoine de Saint-Exupery

“Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.” – Albert Einstein

As an architect I see it as my job to find the right balance between simplification and optimization.

I’ve been in situations where a quick and dirty change will haunt us forever but I’ve also seen the opposite where so called ‘best practices’ introduced an endless list of layers of indirection(facades that call services that call factories that call builders and so on…)  where no one has a clue what’s going on.

The best architectures are the ones were the solution is as simple as possible, but not simpler. What makes getting there even harder is that according to the following post(Simplifiers vs Optimizers) is that people have a natural tendency to either be an optimizer or a simplifier.

What kind of person are you?

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