I chose as a simplicity challenge to write a SQL-less database-driven-like website with my studio site. A time limit was set (less time means more done) of an evening, and thus I took the dirt path instead of the main streets. Of course I find SQL to be powerful, but a little bit confusing for me so I chose this route. When you have a machine set in front of you where you know every part, the process of engineering is fast. If you have to work through millions of parts and spend time looking up how each part is to be used, you certainly will never finish quickly.
Computing machines are so powerful now, bandwidth is increasingly abundant, and programming languages allow all kinds of terrible inefficiencies to be exposed—all great fodder for the next generation of simplicity technologies. When the layers of abstraction are robust and the hidden machinery runs at a silent hum, everything is really okay.
My favorite simplicity technology in programming? It is the hashtable. So inefficient, yet so wonderfully powerful. Who needs a database when you've got hashtables. Did I say I'm not Amazon.com?
Posted by maeda at January 3, 2005 01:30 AM