Comments on: Make the Complex Simple to Win in Your Career and Life

By: Kevin O'Shaughnessy

Kevin O'Shaughnessy — Sun, 23 Aug 2015 07:05:00 +0000

Hi Erik, great first post. Lack of effective communication has always been the biggest problem in our industry.

Learning how to speak to others in a way that resonates with them is a key to unlocking big rewards in our careers. We tend to be so busy thinking about our own problems and our own needs that we forget to communicate in a way that appeals to those we speak to. Finding areas of common interest and value is an enormously successful strategy for getting others buy-in.

I’m adding Message Not Received onto my reading list.

Erik is also one of the zombiecodekill Teacher of the Year finalists and readers can vote for him anonymously if they wish to, up until 7th September.

I am look forward to reading many more great posts from Erik on Simple Programmer.

By: Sander Rossel

Sander Rossel — Sun, 16 Aug 2015 18:22:00 +0000

Hi Erik, I completely agree! In fact my own article about writing simple software will be posted on SimpleProgrammer this week. Unfortunately (and ironically) it’s really hard to make things simple. There’s no algorithm you can use to make anything simple. Even in software, where we do have patterns, principles and best practices, programmers just make stuff far too complex. And not just the novice programmers either, but also people who’ve been in the field for 30 years!

It’s funny you should mention simplicity in communication. I hadn’t really thought of it that way yet. Although Einstein said “If you can’t explain it simply you don’t understand it well enough.”

I’ll be reading your posts here in SimpleProgrammer with great interest.