Slashdot Mirror
The Economist Tackles Complexity in IT
yfnET writes "In recent weeks, The Economist has run a number of articles addressing the ever-increasing complexity of software systems. The magazine, with typical Economist wisdom, casts an eye towards past human endeavors for lessons on how today's IT industry can succeed in dealing with complexity. As part of last month's extensive survey of information technology (see Related Items sidebar), the magazine offers insight on the limits of real-world metaphors, the perils of managing a rat's nest of obsolescent systems, and the need for 'disappearing' technology. And hitting newsstands just today is an overview of development models for increasingly large and unwieldy software projects. Among other things, this article compares the open source model to Microsoft's efforts using a quasi-open license. It also describes the 'agile' programming movement and its potential to keep even the most gigantic of projects under control."
Powerful Languages Like Smalltalk, and Lisp help one handle complexity.
There's a serious problem with agile methodology and outsourcing (I didn't see any articles on Economist.com related to outsourcing, but may have missed it as I gave it only a cursory look).
Large and unwieldy projects benefiting from agile methodologies? Yeah... when you have easy communication between the "customers" (business partners) and your IT staff.
How does that happen when your developers are thousands of miles away, in a different timezone, with a totally different culture, and don't speak your native language?
Diplomacy is the art of saying, "Nice doggie!" until you can find a rock.
Hardware complexity can be reduced with homogenous environments.
Good planning, documentation and standards reduce complexity in software.
How much more do they have to complicate the issue?
People tend to make things over complex if you let them. Bosses want that technology they read about in whatever PHB read these days. Such and such wants some TLA to do some other TLA.
I know it's hard but you have to tell them that these things don't add any value in and of themselves. You want the simplest possible system that will solve the problem at hand. Really, nothing more, don't implement something because you may want/need it tomorrow 'cos when tommorrow comes it won't be right (and if it is, hey, you can implement it then).
----
This push to make [for the user] simple what is after all increasingly complex, can only hide, not eliminate the role of the nerd class, a role the article disparages because nerds are presumed, as the inventors, to have foisted off complexity on the unwitting public. Was it Heinlein who said that "any sufficiently advanced [or was his word complex] technology is indistinguishable from magic"? The wish, on the part of typical users and marketers, that all the wonders of our age and those ages coming next should all just work like magic will in fact only ADD the complexity of UI technologies that are good at hiding the guts of the systems we depend upon. The the engineers and technicians will be as needed as ever and get even less sympathy from a public that never sees directly what it is that the "nerds" are doing for them.
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
Sure, information technology is becoming ever increasingly complex; but it is also a great opportunity for companies that have the management able to deal with that complexity to excel and outperform their competition.
Obsolete systems will cause you more downtime in the end than incremental upgrades. And, what's worse, it will be all at once instead of at 4am twice a month on Saturday morning.
The problem is, that's at odds with the "if it ain't broke don't fix it" wisdom.
Also, there are no incremental upgrades if you're running custom software under MPE on an HP mainframe. There's only (usually very expensive) migration to something else.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Drill baby drill - on Mars
Engineers love to break things into smaller parts, each part serving one and only one function, like pulleys, shafts, rotors, etc.
For really effective design each part has to serve multiple functions, like evolution is able to do: The human mouth can be used to eat, breathe, talk, etc etc.
That's why a robot can't compete with an animal- In a robot each part usually severs only one function, making the machine inefficient as a whole.
This problem is just magnified in computer software and will only get worse unless engineers start changing their tune. I think the worst offender of this philosophy is object oriented programming: It's the ultimate embodyment of this philosophy- Most big object-oriented software have only about 2-3% of code that performs any real work, with the rest only is window dressing to fulfill the engineer's urge to "modularize".
The best software I see seems to be written either in more pragmatic procedural styles, or uses better mathematical underpinnings for its structure, like you'll find in functional programming languages (Haskell, Lisp, etc.)
My apologies for living up to my user name!
Conrad Barski
The problem with trying to compare the software industry to other endeavors of human experience is that in the realm of the computer/electronics industry that most software developers are dealing with, you are near the pinacle of dealing with abstraction of complex systems. While there may be other very complex systems that on a large scale can compare to some computer networks or CPU designs, computer science is the practice of dealing with abstractions on many levels, sometimes simultaneously.
Indeed, electronic state machine digitial computing devices (also called computers) have proven so successful, with the software abstraction dealing with the various levels of abstraction, that they are used in the controlling of other complex systems, from air traffic management, urban water system management, freeway traffic monitoring, and law enforcement dispatching. You've seen them, and they are out there.
Some very talented engineers have done a surprisingly good job of simplifying the tasks and reducing the abstractions to the point that all you need to do for the most part is plug it in and watch the gizmo do its thing. What this article in the Economist seems to be doing is complaining that the job isn't finished, and that complexities in setting up a computer system for some project is more difficult than it should be. That is primarily due to the fact that the author is using products that don't comply with standards (a real problem if standards don't exist yet for a certain concept or technology) or they are using the wrong tool for the job, like using a hammer to put in a few screws. Sure, it will work, but it is aggrivating and sometimes takes quite a bit longer to get the job done, and can damage things around it as a side effect. How many software/electronic gizmos out there do you know get used like that?
While I'm willing to acknowledge that I don't know everything there is to know about the management and organization of complex systems, I would be more inclined to get the opinion on such a subject from a computer programmer than from a plumber.
Can you imagine someone telling Adobe to reduce their Photoshop interface down to one or two buttons? It would make no sense simply because editing a digital image is far more complex a process than 'search the web for these terms' to a user (though both may have similarly huge code bases behind them).
You hit the nail on the head. Software is complex when used to solve complex problems and easier for simple tasks.
A simple accounting package such as QuickBooks can seem tough to use for a user who doesn't have a basic understanding of bookkeeping. OTOH some software is so easy to use that people take it for granted. My girlfriend needed an office suite on her computer so I installed OpenOffice. Because one word processor is very much like every other wordprocessor she started using OpenOffice right away and had no problems even though the only other word processor she used is WordPerfect.
Yes, Google is an extreme example, but it still illustrates an important point (which you alluded to):
You have a another good example, Photoshop. Photoshop is actually rather well orgnaized (well, version CS that is, 7.0 still feels awkward). Not every button is displayed on the interface. When a tool is selected from the tool pallette additional options appear at the top in a context sensative tool option toolbar.
Contrast that to Word. In Word you open it up and to create a new document (i know it does it by default, this is only an example). You can choose File > New or click the button on the toolbar or click "Blank Document" in the taskpane on the right. Three visual ways to do the same task, but they all end up being different. The buton on the toolbar will create a New "Blank Document" (but of course, the only way you would know that is by testing. Clicking File > New only reveales the task pan giving you the option of what kind of new File you'd like to create. Of course, the problem here is if the taskpane is already open then choosing File > New appears to do nothing. But it gets better. Once the user notices the taskpan they are then barraged by a selection of options which include a list of thier most recently acceesed documents, a list of templates, links to microsoft, and of course "Blank Document" (though most beginning Word users never choose Blank Document as thier first choice from my observations).
You see the difference I'm referring to though? A system can contain many buttons but still be layed out in a logocal work flow, presenting users with the options they expect. The same system can also be strewn about a confusing maze of dialog windows or different ways to do things with no visual distinguishing between them. (i don't know how many users i've had click the Print button on the toolbar then complain to me that it didn't let them choose the network printer they wanted to send thier document to.)
I've had a similar discussion with my previous CTO about this topic. He argued that software needed to be designed to in such a way that it did not require training. My opposing point was that software is already designed that way and has proven to not work as easy as it should (think MS Word). Instead consider a bicycle. It's a simple but efficient design that requires a minimal amount of training, yet, once the training is received, a very large amount of utility can be drawn from it. Software like Photoshop requires a minimal amount of training (as compared to Word) but yet can yield very high results within that small amount of training. (Even though it's easy to drive a car we'd never let individuals w/o training out on the road!)
errr, Marx was an economist, dumb-ass.
--A.R.
To paraphrase oo doesn't make messy code, messy people who mis-use oo make messy code.
I think the main problem with what, aparently all of us, have seen with oo code, is the universities. The coding style that is taught in universities makes for really ugly, unmaintainable code.
If you cram 100 abstractions and modularization into a project in university, you get an A and every one says how clever you are to have used all of these features in your project. Do the same in the real world and you are left with unmaintainable blech.
People have to learn that the various oo features are there to help them simplify their code, not to make it more complex. If using a particular modularization technique, say an interface, doesn't remove complexity then don't add it.
Another really bad thing that people do is add code for some unspecified future purpose. Maybe they are creating a class that does some math, they need an add method and a subtract method, so they think, what the hell, I'll add a multiply and divide too. Why? All this does is make the code less readable. Never implement anything that you don't need right now.
"the advantage Lisp and Smalltalk have that other languages lack is that their syntax is so simple that extensions meld in as if they were part of the language."
The same could be said for Forth.
I hear this every damn day. 'We need to make it simple', 'It is a simple service' or 'It is a low option service'. This may work fine for the sales and marketing drones that make their commission off selling unnecessary services to uninformed customers, but as long as there is _choice_ out there, the backend is going to be complicated, and somebody, somewhere is going to have to known how all of it (or at least a major part of it) works.
Try all you want, but unless the entire IT industry decides to switch to one massive global device that we all plug _directly_ into, you can't make video conferencing/VOIP/disaster recovery/etc through 2 LANS, 3 Service Providers and 10 different security layers a 'green/red' push button operation.
I've gotta go get drunk now....
-- I care not for your foolish signatures.
Yes it was fascinating reading. I was so looking forward to that last article (Maybe I will try bugmenot, been meaning to.) I even for a split second thought about giving up my information and registering. But then, I thought... you know, if I was having trouble getting people to register to my website, wouldn't a trail of breadcrumbs in a ./ article do the trick?
Sorry, no nibbles from this fishy.
Someone had to do it.
And he had at least 4 MAJOR things wrong with his theories as well (these four things are the primary reason why I call myself marxist HACKER, not just a marxist):
1. Denial of religion. For without moral values, sharing ceases to be a virtue.
2. Lack of proper data gathering. Without knowing the wants and needs of the population, over production and under production is inevitable.
3. Lack of patience- the technology wasn't ready for what he was proposing at the time- agricultural science was just begining to prove itself, and 98% of the population was still required to work on the farms for the society to eat. A far cry from today when our main economic problem is a surplus of labor.
4. Centralization- this is the worst mistake he made, and it's a mistake that is being duplicated today in corporatism and centralized stock markets under so-called "capitalistic" countries.
The errors of Adam Smith are similar:
1. Denial of religion- by embracing one of the seven deadly sins, Adam Smith denied morality as a motivator for human beings.
2. Lack of proper data gathering- while the Invisible Hand of the Market is very good at determining WANTS it's very bad at determining NEEDS- particularily of people who are unemployed or underemployed and thus denied entry into the market, and for those who are too stupid to buy what they NEED and only buy what they WANT.
3. Lack of patience- Capitalism wants efficiency immediately, and will run you right over and pound you into the ground if you get in the way.
4. Centralization- by not putting any checks and balances on greed, mergers of corporations mean that in the end there can be only one mega-corporation- one board to rule them all, one board to find them, one board to bind them all and in the darkness profit from them.
My final solution for both is similar- $1/mile/shipping container tax. This encourages stuff to be produced as close to the end consumer as possible- thus bringing back jobs where comparative advantage would have taken them away. You still have the problem of jobs disappearing to technical obsolescence- but for the most part, those jobs are replaced with new jobs working on the new equipment.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
> That doesn't mean that all layers are actual code,but can be just proxies for a possibility.
.NET, it has 18 levels of inheritance above it, all designed for these kinds of hooks. Are you able to break the concept of a button into 18 separate levels? I can't. Do you think this is a good design? I don't.
If you look at a button control in the latest iteration of
> an engineer makes things as modular as they need to be and no more. But they design so that they can replace with better technology later.
If that was really the case, I think that line of reasoning would be justifiable. Personally, though, I find a lot of the complex software written that I have to deal with is filled with good modularization intentions that would have been a lot less problematic if people had thought to themselves "Don't write what I don't need right now, today."
> You don't know what you are talking about
You make some good points. Why follow them with attacks?
I like how this post instntly soawned a flmewar pn economy, mostly fueled by people that either don't understand
1. that The Economist is a magazine, not the people referred to in the sentence "economists say".
2. anything about economics.
3. both.
The Economist is a very good news magazine full of reasonable articles and opinions, in all senses of the word "reasonable". There is not enough praise on Slashdot to make it justice. You should all subscribe, assuming that you are interested of knowing what happens in the world from a political, economical and yes, technical standpoint.
Code for rm could be implemented in C with handfull of lines. Todays alternatives take thousands of lines of code, but to an end user the second alternative is simple. User doesn't have to know what the commands are, just toss the file away, as you would with solid objects.
So there we have it, simple problem becomes complex from implementation point of view. I once had a customer who joked when I delivered them a new system that calculated the price and basic layout of the systems they were manufacturing, that inspite the fact that now it took less than tenth of the time to do the calculations, that we could still improve it so it would do the calculations when he pressed a button while thinking of something else.
It should also be noted that what was impossible few years ago is now possible, because of improvement to hardware. This adds to the layers of complexity, because implementers can actually use modular approach instead of optimizing at lowest possible level.
Aren't these the same people who tried to tell us that "comparative advantage" meant we should give up our manufacturing and all get degrees in high tech?
Many manufacturing jobs are cheaper overseas. Your point being? (ie: economist's point of view)
If you got your degree in `high tech' because of what you heard an economist say... well, you deserve what you get then.
If you're trully interested in computers and their capabilities (ie: a `computer scientist'), then your job cannot be outsourced.
The coding jobs will go away---but that doesn't mean there aren't plenty of non-coding things to do (like design, research, etc., until we have computers walking and talking around the world there are still plenty of opportunities it IT---most of which pay off big time no matter where you do them).
It's about time people with computer science degrees realized that they weren't training to become a code monkey.
"If anything can go wrong, it will." - Murphy
Eh... unconvincing. Organic systems are great if you don't mind a little fudging of the numbers. For example, human memory is notoriously unreliable. Combining features tends to create single points of failure and organic systems have a very narrow optimal operating environment. Try dropping the temperature by a hundred degrees or so and see how you fare. The lack of validation, if you will, on inputs, creates a significant susceptibility to viruses, bacteria, food poisoning and the like.
There are plenty of successful organic systems, but there's a whole lot more failures, which you don't see, because they are all dead. And failure is pretty expensive.
Also, you aren't taking into account the fact that complex computer systems perform sophisticated analysis on other complex information systems that organic systems are ill-equipped to handle. They are really best at operating on other organic systems. So if you were to design organic financial software, it would work best on an organic financial system. When you want near-instant, reliable, repeatable and accurate information, an organic system won't work for you at all.
Its like the difference between designing a bridge over a river, and waiting for a rockslide to fill in the river.
"It's Dot Com!"
I must have read Groucho as opposed to the real thing: Marx's theory of value is if anything, too moral. Marx criticizes 1800's religion because it told people that suffering on this earth would be repaid 10 times over in heaven. When you consider the society that Marx saw, England during the industrial revolution, it's really hard not to consider that kind of religious thought evil and manipulative.
Marx saw, just like we can see in today's US in a smaller scale, how religious beliefs can be twisted to make people act in a way that goes against their, and most people's, best interest. Marx belived that morality and religion are not synonymous. In many cases, religious beliefs can be completely immoral. Thus, he favored a society where morality was rational, as opposed of just be dictated by a book.
If you don't belive that morality can exist without religion, you should get out of the house more.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
In fact, getting better skills is just a trap- it means that you'll be far more valuable as an employee than as a manager. Only the skilless can become managers.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
I think the problem is usually implicit type conversions rather than operator overloading. In particular, allowing almost-random conversions between a concrete type such as a number and a string form is just asking for trouble: it's great for quick 'n' dirty scripts, but a child's toy in a grown-up world for serious projects.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Complexity may be inevitable, but for a moment lets put on our economist hat and look at what motivates companies to tolerate complexity. While some complexity in inherent, I believe that a lot of this complexity is often accidental, sometimes born out of naivete and occasionally deliberate. However, at the end of the day companies are not in a big hurry because the added cost of complexity often doesn't cost them anything, it is merely added to the cost of doing business and paid for by the consumer.
Furthermore, in some cases complexity can be quite convenient. For example, in my city the gas company outsources its billing so that one company provides gas and the other bills for it. Sounds great, but when ever there is a discrepancy between the bill and the amount of gas you've used, good luck trying to get something resolved. In my case the gas had long been cut off but the billing continued. After fighting through automated telephone systems to speak to real live people they quite happily point the finger at the other guy and leave it at that. In effect the complexity that they have engineered into their business model provides them with a very handy excuse for inaction.
Perhaps you expect capitalism and free markets to address this problem? I think that the much of our technical infrastructure is so monstrous and well entrenched that, just like your local utilities, there no room for upstart firms to enter the market. For the consumer (end consumer or other business entities) there are very few legitimate choices. More often than not I think that complexity is often just another excuse to maintain the status quo and an excuse that is held up to 'educate' consumers not to expect any better.
I'd prefer something like: "Don't bother implementing things you don't know you'll ever need." That still rules out the time-wasting feature creep, while acknowledging that it's often far more efficient to plan for likely future developments from the start rather than constantly evolving a system without any sort of "grand plan".
All evolutionary development causes overhead, most of which is unnecessary if you can anticipate major future developments with reasonable accuracy. Despite all the nay-sayers, I have never yet worked on a real project where this was not the case.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
This has to be a wind up!! East Timor! The Australian Government of Gough Whitlam stood by in 1974 whilst the Indonesian Government invaded East Timor then condoned Indonesia's control of the country. Until 1999 the Australian governments from both parties were happy to keep diplomatic ties with Jarkarta and sell weapons, and military training to the TNI (indonesian miliary). Weapons and training they had been made plainly aware was being used to suppress civilan dissent in East Timor, including torture and murder.
The brief intervention in East Timor was aberrant, rather than standard behaviour for Australia and was a tiny step back towards reasonable and respectable treatment of a loyal wartime (WWII) ally, East Timor.
Perhaps while you take the time to "condemn India, China and Mexico" you might read an international news paper... this is all in the public record.
Who's with me?! I SAID... WHO'S WITH ME!!??