Victims of Complexity - Speaker Deck

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VICTIMS OF COMPLEXITY BOZHIDAR BATSOV

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HEY, THERE!

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(ABOUT-BUG)  Bozhidar (Божидар) a.k.a. Bug  Devoted to Emacs  Author of CIDER, maintainer of nREPL, blah, blah, blah  @bbatsov  bozhidar on the Clojurians Slack (#cider/#nrepl)  @bozhidarb on Reddit (long story)  metaredux.com  emacsredux.com

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2020

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2021

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NO CLOJURE CONFERENCES SINCE FEBRUARY 2020

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THAT MAKES ME VERY SAD

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ALWAYS LOOK ON THE BRIGHT SIDE OF LIFE

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LOCAL TOURISM

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WEDDING

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I’VE BUILT A DESKTOP PC AND SWITCHED TO LINUX

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AND THEN TO WINDOWS…

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THIS PRESENTATION WAS CREATED IN POWERPOINT!

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CLOJURED 2017 AND ONE EPIC POWERPOINT FIASCO

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I LOVE WINDOWS!

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WHAT ABOUT CIDER?

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CIDER 0.24 (FEBRUARY 2020, IN/CLOJURE)  Small improvements

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CIDER 0.25 (JUNE 2020, CLOJURISTS TOGETHER)  Small improvements

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CIDER 0.26 (AUGUST 2020, CLOJURISTS TOGETHER)  Support for nREPL 0.8  Code completion  Symbol lookup  First class support for Babashka  Basic support for sideloading (functionality added in nREPL 0.7)  Smarter handling of ClojureDocs data (no downloads the first time you try to use it or automatic data updates)  Auto-trimming of REPL buffers (disabled by default)  Small improvements

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NREPL 0.7  Native EDN transport (an alternative to the default Bencode transport)  Added the ability to sideload Clojure libraries into a running nREPL server  Now clients can inject the libraries they need without the need for additional manual setup

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NREPL 0.8  Built-in completion op  Built-in lookup up  Added the ability to load middleware dynamically

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BETTER USER EXPERIENCE, LESS HASSLE

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A FEW QUIET MONTHS

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CIDER 1.0 (DECEMBER 2020)  Small improvements

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CIDER 1.1 (APRIL 2021)  Small improvements

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LESS IS MORE

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VICTIMS OF COMPLEXITY BOZHIDAR BATSOV

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SIMPLE MADE EASY

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OUT OF THE TAR PIT

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THE GROUNDHOG DAY DEVELOPMENT METHOD (GDDM)

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CONNECTION MANAGEMENT IN CIDER

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A SINGLE CONNECTION  Ultimate simplicity  No configuration  No ambiguity  No flexibility  You can’t work on multiple projects  You can’t work easily on a ClojureScript project (typically people use two connections for those)

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MULTIPLE CONNECTIONS, STATIC DISPATCH  Very simple  No configuration  No ambiguity  Only one extra command to mark the “current” connection  Some flexibility  You can work on multiple projects  You get to decide which connection to use when

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MULTIPLE CONNECTIONS, DYNAMIC DISPATCH  Quite complex  It’s not always clear which connection to use (e.g. you can have connections without project or two connections to the same project)  Grouping Clojure and ClojureScript connections together and deciding what to do about things like `cljc` files  Lots of flexibility  You can work on multiple projects  All sorts of workflows are supported out of the box

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SESSIONS, TAKE ONE  Quite complex, but supposedly less complex than before  Operate on groups of related connections (sessions) instead of connections  Lots of flexibility  You can work on multiple projects  All sorts of workflows are supported out of the box

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SESSIONS, TAKE TWO (SESMAN)  Quiet complex  Same as before, but now it’s a generic library for session management in Emacs  Session management becomes a third-party library  Less flexibility  You can work on multiple projects  Some workflows get broken, as we now have a more rigid session mapping mechanism

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LET’S SOLVE THIS PROBLEM WITH REGULAR EXPRESSIONS…

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WELL-DOCUMENTED COMPLEX CODE IS STILL COMPLEX

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NO FEATURES, NO PROBLEMS

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IS ALL COMPLEXITY THE SAME?

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INHERENT/ESSENTIAL COMPLEXITY VS ACCIDENTAL COMPLEXITY

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CORE COMPLEXITY VS PERIPHERAL COMPLEXITY

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VERTICAL COMPLEXITY VS HORIZONTAL COMPLEXITY

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CORE COMPLEXITY  Complexity that touches many parts of part of the codebase  Connection management in CIDER  The choice of a REPL server  Request processing API  Choice of data structures  It’s rarely the same as inherent complexity (which is often rooted in the business domain)  It’s the complexity that’s hardest/most expensive to undo

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PERIPHERAL COMPLEXITY  Complexity that’s orthogonal to the core functionality  Configuration options  Things built on the top of the core APIs  Variations of core commands and APIs  The stuff that’s nice to have, but you didn’t really need  Easy to undo, as it’s typically not coupled with anything important

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CORE COMPLEXITY == HARDER TO COMPREHEND/CHANGE

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PERIPHERAL COMPLEXITY == HARDER TO LEARN

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THE CORE COMPLEXITY IS THE SCARIER ONE, BUT YOU HAVE TO BE WARY OF BOTH

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THE GROUNDHOG DAY DEVELOPMENT METHOD (GDDM)

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INF-CLOJURE – A CASE STUDY OF SIMPLICITY  No external deps  Very basic functionality  All implemented in terms of evaluating Clojure code and processing the raw result  Few configuration options  Works everywhere

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MONROE – BACK TO THE BASICS  Fork of CIDER predating the birth of cider-nrepl and the modern connection management  Dropped the notion of dedicated buffers for things like documentation, macroexpansion, results, etc  Not coupled with Clojure as strongly as CIDER  Convenience/flexibility vs simplicity

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“PERFECTION IS ACHIEVED, NOT WHEN THERE IS NOTHING MORE TO ADD, BUT WHEN THERE IS NOTHING LEFT TO TAKE AWAY.” -- ANTOINE DE SAINT-EXUPERY

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COMPLEXITY IS A CHOICE

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SIMPLICITY IS A CHOICE

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KEEP IT SIMPLE

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THE CHECKLIST  How much complexity does feature X add?  What type of complexity is this?  How big of an (positive) impact it would make?  Do I want to develop it? Can I develop it (properly)?  Does anyone want to develop it?  Do I want to maintain this?  Can I maintain this?

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Do I really need this feature? A problem that solves Itself! Yes! Have I thought this through? Not really.

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START WITH NO

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THE FACT THAT SOMETHING SEEMS LIKE A GOOD IDEA DOESN’T NECESSARILY MAKE IT A GOOD IDEA