Quotes About Complexity

The purpose of abstraction is not to be vague, but to create a new semantic level in which one can be absolutely precise.

Math is easy; design is hard.

Design is important because chaos is so hard.

It now seems to me that the findings of more than fifty years of DNA research have provided materials for a new and enormously powerful argument to design.

Object-oriented design is the roman numerals of computing.

Practice design, Not Decoration: Don't just make pretty talking points. Instead, display information in a way that makes complex information clear.

There is no such thing as information overload, just bad design. If something is cluttered and/or confusing, fix your design.

The general problem with ambitious systems is complexity. [...] it is important to emphasize the value of simplicity and elegance, for complexity has a way of compounding difficulties.

It is impossible to design anything that is foolproof because fools are so ingenious.

The best designers will use many design patterns that dovetail and intertwine to produce a greater whole.

Simplicity is not about making something without ornament, but rather about making something very complex, then slicing elements away, until you reveal the very essence.

I live proudly in a body of my own design. I defend my right to be complex

Designing and developing anything of consequence is incredibly challenging.

Why is composing symphonies tough? I don't know. It's just very few people in the world can do it well. And I think that's the case with upfront design. It is very hard to do well.

People kind of tend to mystify design and architecture by suggesting you need to train.

We are not inferring design to account for a black box, but to account for an open box.

It's tens of millions of calculations just to design one connection between a piece of structural steel and another piece of structural steel.

Evolution is cleverer than you are.

Design: holding conflicting ideas in your head without difficulty

Software and hardware design is less different than software designers think, but more different than hardware designers think.

There is no such thing as a complete lack of order, only a design so vast it appears unrepetitive up close.

Meta-design is much more difficult than design; it's easier to draw something than to explain how to draw it.

I think there's always something about design that is going to be very difficult for more than a small fraction of people to really get.

The feature of living matter that most demands explanation is that it is almost unimaginably complicated in directions that convey a powerful illusion of deliberate design.