Simplicity

Working on the complexity that is always indirectly implied by simplicity.

Simplicity. "Simplicity is the property, condition, or quality of being simple or un-combined. It often denotes beauty, purity or clarity." en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplicity. It is very rare in today’s world for anything to really be simple from the inside out. Often, when someone states a simple "truth", we automatically understand the statement without really tracing back how much we had to learn and gain in order to obtain the complex knowledge to understand something that sounds simple when communicated out loud.

You probably have an idea of where I am going with this. Very few things are as simple as they seem or should be. Anyone who has worked in the software industry or any other major industry for any length of time knows how it always sounds simple when someone utters it, but that is rarely the case, because of all the implied complexity and all the details that are often not apparent in that statement.

I’m currently employed with Opensource Connections, to which one of their strongest core components is developing thought leadership. From that, stems the B.H.A.G (big, hairy, audacious goals), a project or multiple projects that develop thought leadership. Now before anyone jumps to conclusions that this site or the opensource projects that I’ve been working on, is just to fulfill some quota, it’s not. On I’ve been wanting to write a .Net framework and tools that applies patterns and practices that allows  underrated within the .Net community. Or the framework could be sufficient in itself. But the biggest part of this that I want to accomplish is bringing Simplicity to everything the framework touches on.

I’m calling the framework "Amplify" and the tools … wait for it….. …..drum roll….. "Amptools" (ugggh naming conventions, but it beats Microsoft naming conventions). The idea in mind is that the framework and tools should amplify your project and its output. Probably the biggest way of keeping simplicity is "convention over configuration", but that is not always plausible, so convention should offer a way to be changed to fit the developers environment.

Now, semi off-topic, one of the simplest ways to encourage use of other source libraries in .Net is unit testing code. However, since the concept of BDD is fairly new, but seems worth exploring, I have decided to take this approach, while leveraging Gallio, the neutral testing platform, in its current alpha state, along with Mb-Unit 3.0. More on this in the next post.