Simplicity And Elegance Are Unpopular Because They

[though Computer Science Is A Fairly New Discipline, It Is Predominantly Based On The Cartesian World View. As Edsgar W. Dijkstra Has Pointed Out] A Scientific Discipline Emerges With The - Usually Rather Slow! - Discovery Of Which Aspects Can Be Meaningfully 'studied' In Isolation For The Sake Of Their Own Consistency.

Programming In Basic Causes Brain Damage.

The Art Of Programming Is The Art Of Organizing Complexity.

...simplifications Have Had A Much Greater Long-range Scientific Impact Than Individual Feats Of Ingenuity. The Opportunity For Simplification Is Very Encouraging, Because In All Examples That Come To Mind The Simple And Elegant Systems Tend To Be Easier And Faster To Design And Get Right, More Efficient In Execution, And Much More Reliable Than The More Contrived Contraptions That Have To Be Debugged Into Some Degree Of Acceptability....simplicity And Elegance Are Unpopular Because They Require Hard Work And Discipline To Achieve And Education To Be Appreciated.

When We Take The Position That It Is Not Only The Programmer's Responsibility To Produce A Correct Program But Also To Demonstrate Its Correctness In A Convincing Manner, Then The Above Remarks Have A Profound Influence On The Programmer's Activity: The Object He Has To Produce Must Be Usefully Structured.