Dan Luu

And yet. Many developers aren't taught to evaluate coupling and cohesion directly. *I* was never taught to evaluate coupling and cohesion directly. I had to figure it out on my own. And I only did it after watching Simple Made Easy. So the talk somehow is special *to me*.

I talk to a lot of developers today who seem to have little-to-no experience evaluating coupling, cohesion, resource usage, error modes, etc. And I think our industry is much worse off for it. The concepts are difficult to learn. They're even more difficult to apply.

But, at the end of the day, I don't know how to make half-decent long-term decisions *without* evaluating coupling & cohesion. I have to evaluate a bunch of other stuff too! Much of that "other stuff" is actually more important than coupling & cohesion. But C&C is always there.

Which brings us to the best advice in Simple Made Easy. The advice which always seems to be completely overlooked. OUR OUTPUT FRIGGIN MATTERS!

Programmers love to debate types, tests, build-tools, and semi-colons till the cows come home. We tell ourselves stories about how we're doing The Right Thing. But those stories rarely have basis in actual outcomes–in actual artifacts.

For example, the phrase "fully unit tested," is developer for, "good." But that statement by itself says absolutely nothing about outputs. It doesn't say what will be easy to change, how fast it runs, what failures it might encounter. It doesn't say whether it solves a problem!

The ones who suffer from our navel-gazing are the ones we are supposed to be helping: our users, our businesses, and our coworkers Very few programmers talk about this. And that, to me, is why Simple Made Easy was, and continues to be, important.

Aaaaand I realize now I owe @danluu an apology. I should not have said that he's unaware of the reality of modern programming. He just missed the point of the talk. That's all.