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Software Complexity

It’s worth making a distinction here between complexity and flexibility.

Users don’t want complexity, but they do want flexibility, especially from tools they use all the time. It’s a hard balance to make products that are simple and flexible, but the products that pull it off tend to rule the world. The humble spreadsheet software is the ultimate example.

For example: adding more whitespace and limiting the number of fields on a screen will reduce complexity for users, but it may also reduce flexibility and end up as a net negative.

Alan Kay

Simple things should be simple and complex things should be possible.

Trello co-founder Michael Pryor on pandering to power users, skyrocketing numbers, and the spectre of Microsoft

But the number of your customers who want unbounded complexity is very, very low.