From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
From: jnc@mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa)
Date: Wed, 21 Mar 2018 10:17:53 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [TUHS] daemons are not to be exorcised
Message-ID: <20180321141753.25C4418C088@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>

    > From: Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com>

    > Going forward, I wish that people tried to be simple as they tackle the
    > more complicated problems we have.

I have a couple of relevant quotations on my 'Some Computer-Related Lines'
page:

  "Deliberate complexity is the mark of an amateur. Elegant simplicity is the
  mark of a master."
	-- Unknown, quoted by Robert A. Crawford 

  "Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Some can avoid it. Geniuses
  remove it."
	-- Alan Perlis

  "The most reliable components are the ones you leave out." 
	-- Gordon Bell

(For software, the latter needs to be read as 'The most bug-free lines of
codqe are the ones you leave out', of course.)


I remember watching the people building the LISP machine, and thinking 'Wow,
that system is complex'. I eventually decided the problem was that they were
_too_ smart. They could understand, and retain in their minds, all that
complexity.

	Noel