Stumble upon in Feb 2025

A little while ago, I was presented with an old 2016 blog post by Ricardo J. Mendez on Planet Clojure titled Complexity is the mind-killer. Planet Clojure occasionally resurfaces older posts when their ‘updated timestamp’ is refreshed, which is likely what happened. While not always ideal, this time, I felt lucky. 🍀

It wasn’t until I finished reading this brilliant piece, that I noticed its age — a testament to its timeless relevance.

The fact that it reminded me of Dune only made it better:

I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.

― Frank Herbert, Dune

For me, things seem to be converging around the theme “complexity” and how important it is to minimize it. A couple of months ago, I wrote about how static types can delay dealing with complexity, and more recently, Eric Normand wrote about the difficulty of working in a codebase on his Substack.

Ricardo authored several other insightful posts, but I particularly want to highlight Centralization Is a Fragile Thing.