30
Systems
Tesler's Law
Complexity is a Conserved Quantity.
The article
If
Every system has an irreducible amount of complexity that cannot be removed — only relocated. Hide it from the user and it lands on the developer. Hide it from the developer and it lands on the operator. Hide it from the operator and it lands on the customer at 3 AM.
Then
“When a "simple API" feels too clean, ask: who absorbed the complexity I just removed? If you can't name them, you didn't simplify — you displaced.”
Unless
Honest Layering / Explicit Tradeoffs
Source
Larry Tesler, while at Xerox PARC / Apple (~1984); cited as the "Law of Conservation of Complexity."
Go to the sourceSee also