Skip to content
New issue

Have a question about this project? Sign up for a free GitHub account to open an issue and contact its maintainers and the community.

Sign up for GitHub

By clicking “Sign up for GitHub”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy statement. We’ll occasionally send you account related emails.

Already on GitHub? Sign in to your account

Jump to bottom

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

Merged
merged 6 commits into from
Jan 10, 2022
Merged

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

Changes from 4 commits
Commits
Show all changes
6 commits
Select commit Hold shift + click to select a range
ebffc6f
Incorporate Alan Kay's maxim into 'Prefer simple solutions'.
hober Apr 16, 2021
9d5a3dc
Update index.bs
torgo Jan 10, 2022
16bdf68
Update index.bs
torgo Jan 10, 2022
8be3e67
Update index.bs
torgo Jan 10, 2022
bab52b3
Update index.bs
plinss Jan 10, 2022
900accb
Update index.bs
plinss Jan 10, 2022
File filter

Filter by extension

Filter by extension
Conversations
Failed to load comments.
Loading
Jump to
Jump to file
Failed to load files.
Loading
Diff view
Diff view
15 changes: 15 additions & 0 deletions index.bs
View file
Open in desktop
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -265,11 +265,26 @@ 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."
LeaVerou marked this conversation as resolved.
Show resolved Hide resolved
torgo marked this conversation as resolved.
Show resolved Hide resolved

Do note however that while common cases are often simple,
commonality and complexity are not always correlated.

<div class=example>
Sanitizing HTML to prevent XSS attacks is a complex process that requires extensive security knowledge, however the Sanitizer API provides a shortcut for this common use case.
plinss marked this conversation as resolved.
Show resolved Hide resolved
It also permits simpler types of filtering, but with more configuration.
</div>

See also:

Expand Down