Excellence by Design

A brief but so very relevant article regarding one man’s study of computer system design is this Oct 29, 2012 NYTimes article. It is a glimpse into a lifetime of work by Peter G. Neumann, then a 80-year-old computer scientist at SRI International. It provides a strong reminder of how easy it is to design with complexity, and how hard it is to design for simplification (and robustness).

By the way, the title of this post is taken from the end of the referenced article, where Dr. Neumann was reported to ask Albert Einstein over breakfast….“What do you think of Johannes Brahms?”  to which Einstein replied “I have never understood Brahms, I believe Brahms was burning the midnight oil trying to be complicated.”