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Incorporate Alan Kay's maxim into 'Prefer simple solutions'. #306

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Jan 10, 2022
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Incorporate Alan Kay's maxim into 'Prefer simple solutions'. #306

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Incorporate Alan Kay's maxim into 'Prefer simple solutions'.
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Expand Up @@ -265,11 +265,28 @@ although they may be harder to find.
Simpler features are easier for user agents to implement and test,
more likely to be interoperable,
and easier for authors to understand.
It is especially important to design your feature so that
the most common use cases are easy to accomplish.

Make sure that your <a href="#priority-of-constituencies">user needs</a>
are well-defined.
This allows you to avoid scope creep,
and make sure that your API does actually meet the needs of all users.
Of course,
complex or rare use cases are also worth solving,
though their solutions may be more complicated to use.
As Alan Kay said,
"simple things should be simple, complex things should be possible."
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Do note however that while common cases are often simple,
commonality and complexity are not always correlated.

<div class=example>
The Sanitizer API provides a shortcut for the common case of preventing XSS,
even though the rules necessary for that are not simple at all
and requires extensive security knowledge.
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It also permits simpler types of filtering, but with more configuration.
</div>

See also:

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