How Simplicity Will Save GIS

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how simplicity will save GIS Vladimir Agafonkin 10.09.14

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Vladimir Agafonkin

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how simplicity will save GIS

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how simplicity will save GIS

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GIS is hard

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6.5 years building map apps

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author and maintainer of

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by far the most used open source map library

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still clueless about GIS

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typical FOSS4G talk

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clueless about GIS exactly the reason why Leaﬂet succeeded

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story recap now with animated GIFs!

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April 2008

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22 years old

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so I’m doing maps now, how hard could this be?

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maps huh? • image tiles involved • pan and zoom with a mouse • maybe put some stuff on top

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PFF

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Lets build a JS API from scratch!

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— don’t reinvent the wheel — there’s a mature established open source solution — lets build a wrapper

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OpenLayers >100,000 lines of code? hundreds of features? megabytes of JavaScript?

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building an API wrapper

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#osmdev: hey guys, what do you think about making a simple, lightweight OL alternative?

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no way you could do that

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wasting time instead of contributing

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community: worthless idea ! boss: don’t reinvent the wheel

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oh wait

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building from scratch; didn’t tell anyone

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a couple weeks later

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Web Maps Lite

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born as a protest against bloat, clutter and complexity

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3 years later: open source!

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now

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but how?

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simplicity

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thought process of an aspiring map app creator:

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I want to learn GIS, reading books and academic papers and articles about geospatial data, map projections, server-side technologies, databases, different geospatial standards and protocols and their implementations in available range of server and client software, perform analysis of my data and use cases, preferably involving other GIS specialists and do a lot of other research so that I can make sensible decisions about the required technology stack, adjust it to the needs of my application and ﬁnally make а f**king map (maybe in a couple years)

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I want a map right now

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get the tech out of my way

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application development is a creative process

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technology should bridge the gap between creative thinking and the end result

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dr ken robinson I believe this passionately: that we don’t grow into creativity, we grow out of it. Or rather, we get educated out if it.

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you must unlearn what you have learned

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let me create, explore, experiment, and learn along the way

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we spend so many years learning things before we get the chance to understand how to apply our knowledge

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creative learning: create learn

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“The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.” —Albert Einstein

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dead simple to get started dead simple to understand dead simple to use

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don’t force me to think about unimportant things until I’m ready to address them convention over conﬁguration:

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complexity ﬁlls your mind, makes it slow and inert, it dumbs you down

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simplicity frees your mind, unleashes your creativity and learning potential

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simplicity enables you to do more with less

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decision process of a company that’s looking to add a map to their service:

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so lets hire a GIS consulting ﬁrm to do some research for us and choose the right technology stack and then help us set it up and consult our developers so that they could get more familiar with it and maybe also buy some enterprise support plan and…

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hey front-end guy! make a map!

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the most successful tech companies have the tinkerer culture

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creative + productive + happy => awesome apps

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lots of awesome apps => community growth & tech exposure

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simplicity attracts a vibrant community

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simplicity means focus on the essentials, which leads to higher quality

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“Simplicity is prerequisite for reliability.” —Edsger Dijkstra

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thou shalt not try to cover all the use cases

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feature need complexity simplify

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simplicity means easier proﬁling and less bottlenecks, which leads to better performance

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RBush

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simplify.js

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seidel + earcut OSM building (15 vertices) earcut x 707,439 ops/sec pnltri x 227,890 seidel x 77,236 poly2tri x 29,354 libtess x 21,875 ! monkey (1204 vertices): seidel x 608 libtess x 342 poly2tri x 239 earcut x 219 pnltri x 112 dude shape (94 vertices): earcut x 33,620 pnltri x 13,626 seidel x 10,037 libtess x 4,362 poly2tri x 3,773

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simplicity makes people less hesitant to contribute

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simplicity makes it easier to concentrate

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simpliﬁcation is how the technological progress happens

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hard problem

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manageable problem

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simple problem harder problem

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binary code assembler C scripting languages

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jQuery

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Ruby on Rails

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node.js

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“Simplicity is the outcome of technical subtlety. It is the goal, not the starting point.” —Maurice Saatchi

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“oh but we’re not paid to do simple things!”

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people who resist progress, unwilling to learn and adapt continuously, are in denial and always fail

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you don’t think about simplicity when complexity is taken for granted

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paradox of fitness: you don’t realize the benefits of regular exercise until you become more physically fit