"Complexity" seems to be a lot like "energy": you can transfer it from the end-user to one/some of the other players, but the total amount seems to remain pretty much constant for a given task. -- Ran
I really like it but I have no idea where it comes from, who is Ran and what’s the backstory there (if any).
Did a quick attempt at googling but failed to get answers. Does someone knows more about it? Thanks!
ChatGPT sez:
The quote "Complexity seems to be a lot like energy: you can transfer it from the end-user to one/some of the other players, but the total amount seems to remain pretty much constant for a given task." is attributed to Richard P. Gabriel, a well-known computer scientist and writer. Richard Gabriel is recognized for his work in software engineering and his writings on programming, software design, and the philosophy of software development.
This particular quote encapsulates a key idea in software design and system architecture: the inherent complexity of a task does not disappear but can be shifted between different components or stakeholders within a system. The insight is that while the burden of complexity can be moved around, the overall complexity involved in accomplishing the task remains essentially unchanged.
Gabriel has written extensively on these topics, often exploring the balance between simplicity and complexity in programming and design, and the impact these have on developers and users.
Gabriel wrote many of his more seminal pieces in the 1980s. There is a famous Kurosawa film from 1985 called "Ran": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ran_(film) - not sure if there is any relation to some video game which may have been inspired by both.
I'm sorry to say that, but it's really really unreliable to use chatbots for any kind of precise quotes or even facts, as long as they're not tell well-known. LLMs very, very often hallucinate, just like they did in your case. The answer is completely wrong and made up. The best I found is this, in Google: https://github.com/akuchling/quotations/blob/master/python-quotes.xml#L2067
My guess is that it might've been a quote from some old IRC or Usenet discussion.
Outstanding sleuthing, @Yardanico! (The ideas seem to have been definitely floating around from the 1960s with Herb Simon and systems complexity theory and later in the 80s with Fred Brooks and Richard Gabriel and others and of course many of us like physics metaphors because Physics is "imitation catnip" for various reasons.)
(Yeah. Maybe ChatBots aren't good for quote research. Further interaction revealed it was mostly making it all up and I was going to update but you beat me too it, you spritely fellow!)
The LLM cynic in me feels the need to post this.
You really think an LLM would do that? Just Go on the internet and tell lies?
To give a bit more context to my question in case someone is interested, I was attending this interesting talk https://2024.pycon.it/en/event/quit-simplifying (slides here: https://xahteiwi.eu/quit-simplifying/#/) and an amusing reference the speaker gave is about the complexity clock: http://mikehadlow.blogspot.com/2012/05/configuration-complexity-clock.html?m=1
Oddly enough that last blogpost somehow finds DSLs as a later step of degradation of software but reading more actually one of the reason they struggle with DSLs is that they are tough to debug, not checked… almost like DSLs could benefit from a language particularly apt at generating them :)