Tech News
← Back to articles

Don MacKinnon: Why Simplicity Beats Cleverness in Software Design [audio]

read original related products more articles

Episode Highlights

[00:00:48] What Makes Software Maintainable

Don explains why unnecessary complexity is the biggest barrier to maintainability, drawing on themes from A Philosophy of Software Design.

[00:03:14] The Cost of Clever Abstractions

A real story from a Node.js API shows how an unused abstraction layer around MongoDB made everything harder without delivering value.

[00:04:00] Shaping Teams and Developer Tools

Don describes the structure of the Searchcraft engineering team and how the product grew out of recurring pain points in client projects.

[00:06:36] Reducing Complexity Through SDK and Infra Design

Why Searchcraft intentionally limits configuration to keep setup fast and predictable.

[00:08:33] Lessons From Consulting

... continue reading