Key Points

• Software's Primary Technical Imperative is managing complexity. This is greatly aided by a design focus on simplicity.

• Simplicity is achieved in two general ways: minimizing the amount of essential complexity that anyone's brain has to deal with at any one time, and keeping accidental complexity from proliferating needlessly.

• Design is heuristic. Dogmatic adherence to any single methodology hurts creativity and hurts your programs.

• Good design is iterative; the more design possibilities you try, the better your final design will be.

• Information hiding is a particularly valuable concept. Asking "What should I hide?" settles many difficult design issues.

• Lots of useful, interesting information on design is available outside this book. The perspectives presented here are just the tip of the iceberg.