(thevaluable.dev) A Detailed Explanation of The KISS Principle in Software

ROAM_REFS: https://thevaluable.dev/kiss-principle-explained/

• A Detailed Explanation of The KISS Principle in Software

When I search about the KISS principle on The Internet, I stumble across many websites defining it in a couple of lines: simplicity is important, let's be simple, the end. They often fail to explain what is simplicity, why simplicity is important, and how to achieve it.

Simplicity is one of the driving idea we should keep in mind at all time when designing a system. The problem: it's really hard to achieve.

You guessed it: we'll dive into simplicity (and complexity) in this article. I won't write about all the different ways complexity can creep in your codebase but, instead, I'll try to give you a quick overview of the different masks complexity can wear, with many examples. We'll go from the business domain itself, through the nitty-gritty (the implementation), to end up in the complexity of software architecture.

More precisely, we'll try to answer these questions:

• What's the difference between simple and easy?
• Why do we need to keep things simple?
• Can we avoid the complexity created by the business itself?
• Why should we thrive to delete code?
• What is cyclomatic complexity?
• What means simplicity for an architecture?
• How to manage your dependencies?
• Why we shouldn't try to outsmart everyone with our code?