I wish more languages/softwares/projects set this goal of simplicity and clarity.
Clarity is easier to measure. Simplicity is harder. Take Golang for example, yes you can learn the language in a few days or weeks but then some of the external complexity ends up with boilerplate. Is that simpler in the end?
Then simplicity has many aspects. Take a software project. Simple for who? the users? the original devs? the maintainers?
We have Kolmogorov complexity for algorithms but what is the equivalent to measure whole systems?
> We have Kolmogorov complexity for algorithms but what is the equivalent to measure whole systems?
Theory is nice, but we don't really spend enough time systematically or empirically measure how long it takes people to learn various things, or similarly how easy they find making a change to an existing (codebase|project|language|etc). Doing so and just reporting what we learn as an industry would have a ton of value -- arguably a lot more than just coming up with a metric or proxy model of what we care about (how long something takes to learn or maintain).
Clarity is easier to measure. Simplicity is harder. Take Golang for example, yes you can learn the language in a few days or weeks but then some of the external complexity ends up with boilerplate. Is that simpler in the end?
Then simplicity has many aspects. Take a software project. Simple for who? the users? the original devs? the maintainers?
We have Kolmogorov complexity for algorithms but what is the equivalent to measure whole systems?