Oren Eini

aka Ayende Rahien

Oren Eini

CEO of RavenDB

a NoSQL Open Source Document Database

Get in touch with me:

oren@ravendb.net

+972 52-548-6969

Posts: 7,546

Comments: 51,163

filter by tags archive

architecture (599) rss
bugs (447) rss
challanges (123) rss
community (372) rss
databases (480) rss
design (892) rss
development (628) rss
hibernating-practices (69) rss
miscellaneous (592) rss
performance (390) rss
programming (1074) rss
raven (1420) rss
ravendb.net (501) rss
reviews (184) rss

2024
- December (3)
- November (2)
- October (1)
- September (3)
- August (5)
- July (10)
- June (4)
- May (6)
- April (2)
- March (8)
- February (2)
- January (14)
2023
- December (4)
- October (4)
- September (6)
- August (12)
- July (5)
- June (15)
- May (3)
- April (11)
- March (5)
- February (5)
- January (8)
2022
- December (5)
- November (7)
- October (7)
- September (9)
- August (10)
- July (15)
- June (12)
- May (9)
- April (14)
- March (15)
- February (13)
- January (16)
2021
- December (23)
- November (20)
- October (16)
- September (6)
- August (16)
- July (11)
- June (16)
- May (4)
- April (10)
- March (11)
- February (15)
- January (14)
2020
- December (10)
- November (13)
- October (15)
- September (6)
- August (9)
- July (9)
- June (17)
- May (15)
- April (14)
- March (21)
- February (16)
- January (13)
2019
- December (17)
- November (14)
- October (16)
- September (10)
- August (8)
- July (16)
- June (11)
- May (13)
- April (18)
- March (12)
- February (19)
- January (23)
2018
- December (15)
- November (14)
- October (19)
- September (18)
- August (23)
- July (20)
- June (20)
- May (23)
- April (15)
- March (23)
- February (19)
- January (23)
2017
- December (21)
- November (24)
- October (22)
- September (21)
- August (23)
- July (21)
- June (24)
- May (21)
- April (21)
- March (23)
- February (20)
- January (23)
2016
- December (17)
- November (18)
- October (22)
- September (18)
- August (23)
- July (22)
- June (17)
- May (24)
- April (16)
- March (16)
- February (21)
- January (21)
2015
- December (5)
- November (10)
- October (9)
- September (17)
- August (20)
- July (17)
- June (4)
- May (12)
- April (9)
- March (8)
- February (25)
- January (17)
2014
- December (22)
- November (19)
- October (21)
- September (37)
- August (24)
- July (23)
- June (13)
- May (19)
- April (24)
- March (23)
- February (21)
- January (24)
2013
- December (23)
- November (29)
- October (27)
- September (26)
- August (24)
- July (24)
- June (23)
- May (25)
- April (26)
- March (24)
- February (24)
- January (21)
2012
- December (19)
- November (22)
- October (27)
- September (24)
- August (30)
- July (23)
- June (25)
- May (23)
- April (25)
- March (25)
- February (28)
- January (24)
2011
- December (17)
- November (14)
- October (24)
- September (28)
- August (27)
- July (30)
- June (19)
- May (16)
- April (30)
- March (23)
- February (11)
- January (26)
2010
- December (29)
- November (28)
- October (35)
- September (33)
- August (44)
- July (17)
- June (20)
- May (53)
- April (29)
- March (35)
- February (33)
- January (36)
2009
- December (37)
- November (35)
- October (53)
- September (60)
- August (66)
- July (29)
- June (24)
- May (52)
- April (63)
- March (35)
- February (53)
- January (50)
2008
- December (58)
- November (65)
- October (46)
- September (48)
- August (96)
- July (87)
- June (45)
- May (51)
- April (52)
- March (70)
- February (43)
- January (49)
2007
- December (100)
- November (52)
- October (109)
- September (68)
- August (80)
- July (56)
- June (150)
- May (115)
- April (73)
- March (124)
- February (102)
- January (68)
2006
- December (95)
- November (53)
- October (120)
- September (57)
- August (88)
- July (54)
- June (103)
- May (89)
- April (84)
- March (143)
- February (78)
- January (64)
2005
- December (70)
- November (97)
- October (91)
- September (61)
- August (74)
- July (92)
- June (100)
- May (53)
- April (42)
- March (41)
- February (84)
- January (31)
2004
- December (49)
- November (26)
- October (26)
- September (6)
- April (10)
2025
- January (12)

Apr 11 2012

Simplicity is prerequisite for reliability

time to read 1 min | 39 words

I just learned that the title of this post is a(n apparently) well known quote from Edsger W. Dijkstra.

I like it, and I fully agree. And along with the following, it makes up my design philosophy:

Tweet Share Share 8 comments

Comments

11 Apr 2012
10:19 AM

Duncan

It is also the most difficult thing to achieve.

11 Apr 2012
11:43 AM

Gene Hughson

In order to achieve it, design has to, at some point, shift from a creative mode to an editor mode, stripping away the parts of the creation that are extraneous.

The illustration selected could also be used to show that brevity does not equal clarity.

11 Apr 2012
12:31 PM

njy

@Duncan: true story

11 Apr 2012
16:25 PM

Sumit

Could you host the image within your site. My work is blocking the url http://www.jokesprank.com/ ...?

11 Apr 2012
17:41 PM

Dan

Anyone know the source for that quote??

11 Apr 2012
17:58 PM

Frank Quednau

In this context I also very much like a quote from Saint-Exupery which goes like that:

"Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away."

11 Apr 2012
20:52 PM

Adam

@Dan wikiquote, for one http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Edsger_W._Dijkstra

12 Apr 2012
11:05 AM

Varun

Thats true

Comment preview

Comments have been closed on this topic.

Markdown turns plain text formatting into fancy HTML formatting.

Phrase Emphasis

*italic*   **bold**
_italic_   __bold__

Links

Inline:

An [example](http://url.com/ "Title")

Reference-style labels (titles are optional):

An [example][id]. Then, anywhere
else in the doc, define the link:
  [id]: http://example.com/  "Title"

Images

Inline (titles are optional):

![alt text](/path/img.jpg "Title")

Reference-style:

![alt text][id]
[id]: /url/to/img.jpg "Title"

Headers

Setext-style:

Header 1
========
Header 2
--------

atx-style (closing #'s are optional):

# Header 1 #
## Header 2 ##
###### Header 6

Lists

Ordered, without paragraphs:

1.  Foo
2.  Bar

Unordered, with paragraphs:

*   A list item.
    With multiple paragraphs.
*   Bar

You can nest them:

*   Abacus
    * answer
*   Bubbles
    1.  bunk
    2.  bupkis
        * BELITTLER
    3. burper
*   Cunning

Blockquotes

> Email-style angle brackets
> are used for blockquotes.
> > And, they can be nested.
> #### Headers in blockquotes
> 
> * You can quote a list.
> * Etc.

Horizontal Rules

Three or more dashes or asterisks:

---
* * *
- - - -

Manual Line Breaks

End a line with two or more spaces:

Roses are red,   
Violets are blue.

Fenced Code Blocks

Code blocks delimited by 3 or more backticks or tildas:

```
This is a preformatted
code block
```

Header IDs

Set the id of headings with {#<id>} at end of heading line:

## My Heading {#myheading}

Tables

Fruit    |Color
---------|----------
Apples   |Red
Pears	 |Green
Bananas  |Yellow

Definition Lists

Term 1
: Definition 1
Term 2
: Definition 2

Footnotes

Body text with a footnote [^1]
[^1]: Footnote text here

Abbreviations

MDD <- will have title
*[MDD]: MarkdownDeep

FUTURE POSTS

Partial writes, IO_Uring and safety - one day from now
Configuration values & Escape hatches - 4 days from now
What happens when a sparse file allocation fails? - 6 days from now
NTFS has an emergency stash of disk space - 8 days from now
Challenge: Giving file system developer ulcer - 11 days from now

And 4 more posts are pending...

There are posts all the way to Feb 17, 2025

RECENT SERIES

Challenge (77):
20 Jan 2025 - What does this code do?
Answer (13):
22 Jan 2025 - What does this code do?
Production post-mortem (2):
17 Jan 2025 - Inspecting ourselves to death
Performance discovery (2):
10 Jan 2025 - IOPS vs. IOPS

View all series

Syndication

Main feed
Comments feed

}

Oren Eini

CEO of RavenDB

Comments

Comment preview

Markdown formatting

Phrase Emphasis

Links

Images

Headers

Lists

Blockquotes

Horizontal Rules

Manual Line Breaks

Fenced Code Blocks

Header IDs

Tables

Definition Lists

Footnotes

Abbreviations

FUTURE POSTS

RECENT SERIES

RECENT COMMENTS

Syndication