Sour Systems, or Simple Systems?

James Governor links to a great post on the need for simplicity:

Adrian then hits on a great point:

Why does Sainsbury have an "elaborate system" where surely a simple system would suffice?

I love that. The argument (or recieved wisdom) that elaborate means better is nonsense.

In IT we hear it about things like PHP all the time. Oh no - what you really want is a more scalable system (in enterprise software that invariably means a more elaborate one). Sometimes however there is an argument for lesscode, less software.

Elaboration tend to mask and degare responsibility because you can blame the system if something goes wrong. [We'll see a lot of that in the next couple of months].

Exactly. This goes straight to the point I made yesterday as well - do you want the complex (and supposedly scalable) system a long time from now, or the simple one that works right away? Too many IT people always gravitate toward the former, regardless of what the use case is.