Accidental Complexity

I thought I had some interesting insights in my last post about Postgres and why I was going back to MySQL, at least for the time being. So much so, that I posted it on Reddit. Alas, it didn't go over well. It had a lot of downvotes, and most of the comments were fairly negative. I think I'm still right about what I did and why, but I think I can better articulate why I think so in two words:

Accidental Complexity.

It's definitely not a new concept, and I'm sure many people have talked about it before, but in reading the responses on Reddit, it became clear that this is precisely the reason why I switched to MySQL, and precisely why I probably won't switch back anytime soon.

Wikipedia defines accidental complexity as "complexity that arises in computer programs or their development process (computer programming) which is non-essential to the problem to be solved."

This perfectly describes the issues I was having. Think about if I could sudo apt-get install postgres, hook it up in Rails, and be on my way. I could focus nearly all of my time on essential complexity (ie developing features for my actual application), or at the very least, accidental complexity arising from other applications or from my coding choices.

The choice may bite me later on with other accidental complexity that Postgres tackles well, but right now I want to actually get the project to a point where I can start showing people, and maybe start getting some users. After all, getting users is the whole point. To that end, reducing the hassle being caused by the database is a Good Thing.

So, I really think this should be a lesson for all the applications I write, and all the applications you write as well. Make sure your application reduces the accidental complexity you are forcing on your users. If a significant portion of them are spending a lot of their time configuring your application instead of solving the problem they are trying to solve, you have failed them.

Don't take this to the extreme, though... you still have to see the big picture. Who knows, maybe the default user settings is good for the majority of users, and I just happen to fall in the unlucky minority, but comments like "pg_hba.conf can be a bitch, but updating it to allow transparent local access is just a couple of lines away" tells me that I'm not the only person who has had trouble configuring Postgres, even if the configuration changes are small.