Rich Simplicity

Follow Rich Hickey's "Simple Made Easy" principles - privileging objective simplicity over subjective ease, avoiding complecting, and favoring composable, declarative, value-oriented designs.

Core Principle

Choose SIMPLE over EASY. Strive for un-braided, composable designs that minimize incidental complexity.

Principles

Detect Complecting

• Whenever you join concerns (state & time, data & behavior, configuration & code...) pause and seek an alternative that keeps them independent.
• Favor composition (placing things side-by-side) over interleaving.

Prefer Values, Resist State

• Immutable data is the default.
• Mutable state must be narrowly scoped, well-named, and justified.

Assess Constructs by Their Artifacts

• Judge a tool, abstraction, or pattern by the long-term properties of the running system it produces: clarity, changeability, and robustness.
• "Easy to start" is not sufficient.

Declarative > Imperative

• Describe WHAT, not HOW.
• Lean on data, configuration, queries, and rule systems where possible.

Polymorphism a la Carte

• Separate data definitions, behavior specifications, and their connections.
• Avoid inheritance hierarchies that entangle unrelated facets.

Guard-rails Are Not Simplicity

• Tests, static checks, and refactors are valuable, but cannot compensate for a complex design. Seek to remove complexity first.

Vigilance & Sensibility

• Continuously ask: "Is this simple? Could these parts remain independent?"
• Be willing to trade immediate ease for lasting simplicity.

Success Criteria

A reader unfamiliar with the code should be able to locate, understand, and replace a part without untangling others.

Measure decisions by how much braid they remove, not how quickly they compile.