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"Simple Made Easy" - Rich Hickey (2011)

Strange Loop Conference · 219.9K views · 2021-09-02 · 1:01:39

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Overview

Rich Hickey's Strange Loop 2011 keynote distinguishing 'simple' (not intertwined) from 'easy' (familiar or near at hand). It argues that software complexity comes from complecting things and that we should pick simple constructs.

On Hacker News

HN treats it as the canonical talk on software complexity, shared constantly and recommended to every programmer regardless of language.

Recommended by 14 HN people across 14 months · HN mentions 2022–2026

Topics

Software architecture & designFunctional programming
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rich hickeysimplicitycomplectingclojuresoftware designstrange loop

What people said

Lyngbakr · 2025-09 · Strong recommendation

I'm sure most folks here have seen the talk, but Rich Hickey's Simple Made Easy # is a superb discussion about this in the context of software. # [VIDEO]

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bad_haircut72 · 2025-05 · Strong recommendation

You need to watch this [VIDEO] We should try not to make technical judgements based in flippant things like how few lines can someone not even familiar with the ecosystem get a hello world working

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globular-toast · 2025-01 · Strong recommendation

Also the point of software engineering is to take the real complexity that actually exists and you can't get rid of and work out how to write simple code to deal with it. Good software architecture does not include complexity because there is complexity in the business. It manages the complexity with simple code. The trouble is when people say "complex" you don't really know what they mean, though. They often just mean "difficult". Every programmer who wants to use that word needs to watch this: [VIDEO]

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Sources

Video by Strange Loop Conference, played through YouTube.

Data and selection notes

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HN Library: HackerTube export (2026-10-31) and open-index/hacker-news. Upstream summaries and classifications may contain AI errors.

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