2017 03 18 principle of least astonishment - raisercostin/raisercostin.github.io GitHub Wiki

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It could be that the Principle of Least Astonishment - POLA is governing our world.

You're affected if you've been astonished by:

• long debug session - A lot of WTF's take some time.
• long learning/rampup time
• you get explanations like:
  • It's complicated because it is.
  • You can't simplify it.
  • This library/framework needs a paradigm swift in your thinking: scala, playframework, scalaz.

The surprises list is long and ranges from benign code smells, non-idioms to anti-patterns and violations of the conventions and common sense.

• logs/exceptions are missing, are swallowed or reported at the wrong level
• conventions are broken
• default coventions/values/things are not intuitive or go against common sense
• overdesign
  • there are multiple concepts to learn when simple ones are enough
  • you need to learn advanced topics to do simple stuff
• scala
  • implicits
  • overdesign - It's very easy to overdesign things in scala. Much easier than in java.
• scalaz
  • operator usage as replacement for good names
  • speciality jargon is mandatory and not optional
• compatibility surprises on the library upgrades: java wasn't that surprising
• global state exists and influences unkown, hard to know places
• there are colateral effects
• magic numbers are surprising

If you're an genius in your field you will be able to explain it in simple words: take examples from Feynman, Eninstein, Russel.