…If you aim to dispense with method, learn method
…If you aim at facility, work hard
…If you aim for simplicity, master complexity
   — Lu Ch’ai (Wang Kai), [chinese painter, ca 17 century]

The economy and simplicity of traditional oriental painting is not arrived at by squinting at the subject in order to blur or filter out the complexity — subjects are studied in detail (with both eye and mind). The simplicity and elegance are distilled from the far side of that process.

Consider the tale/fable of the gentleman who entered a well known chinese painter’s shop and described a painting he would like to have painted. The painter talked the painting over with him over a cup of tea, thought for a few minutes and said he could do such a painting but he wouldn’t have it ready for a year. The gentleman frowned at such a delay, but this painter came highly recommended, so he paid a downpayment and left the shop.

A year passed and the gentleman returns and asks the painter if his painting is ready. Without a word, the painter rolls out a new length of rice paper, grinds some fresh ink, and proceeds to paint the picture before the gentleman’s very eyes. In a few minutes he is finished. The gentleman is stunned, and quite impressed that this picture, painted in just a few minutes, captured exactly what he had wanted. "Don’t get me wrong", the gentleman spoke, "the painting is exquisite. But it took you less time to paint than we spent drinking tea a year ago, could you not have found the few minutes needed to paint it any sooner?"

The painter went to a cupboard and retrieved a large box full of hundreds of discarded versions of the masterpiece now drying on the table. "Which of these", the painter replied, "would you have wished to have sooner?"

Well, there may be as many versions of this fable as there were discarded paintings in the box, and, Damn, could that painter estimate a project or what!? But project estimation isn’t my point. Try this one:

I would not give a fig for the simplicity this side of complexity,
but I would give my life for the simplicity on the other side of
complexity.    — Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894)

I think we can all recognize a certain Truth in these quotes that applies to any human activity — and certainly to software development. Getting over the complexity divide takes work. You can’t just skirt around it, and you shouldn’t fear it.

Behind complexity, there is always simplicity to be revealed. Inside simplicity, there is always complexity to be discovered.   — Gang Yu

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