Saturday, December 29, 2007

The KISS Principle is Hard

The most obvious principle in software development is KISS or Keep It Simple Stupid is a hard principle to follow.

And it show up in my incompetence during the development of my upcoming Twisted Shootout game.

Just today, I made the finishing touch to my programming task involving collision detection.

I just solved the final piece of puzzle with a simple adjustment of a fricking variable.(After a spontaneous look at an overlooked variable)

All this time, I been thinking of overly complicated solution to my problems when it is right under my nose!

Before I had to adjust the variable, I also tried an overly complicated algorithm that went nowhere until a ruby-loving friend with a mathematic degree told me that I should his simple approach. It replaced like 99% of various conditional statements, variables, and others with a simple conditional statement and a few variables.

Moral of the story:

What you think off the top of your head is often not the most simple or easiest solution to the problem.

You can discuss this post at the forum.