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<!-- buttondown-editor-mode: plaintext --><h3 style="text-align:center;">by <a href="https://ideolalia.com/">Zach Tellman</a></h3>
For the past few years, I've been working on a book about software design. Its thesis is fairly simple:
> Software development can be reduced to a single, iterative action. Almost everything we do in the course of a day β the pull requests, the meetings, the whiteboard diagrams, the hallway conversations β is an explanation. Our job is to explain, over and over, the meaning of our software: what it is, and what we expect it to become.
In this newsletter, I'll be sharing some excerpts from my still-incomplete manuscript. I'll also share some tangential thoughts that didn't make the cut. Topics will include:
* practical definitions for simplicity and complexity
* names and metaphors
* the history of software design
* language models as software developers, and vice-versa
If any of this sounds interesting, you should check out the [introductory post](https://explaining.software/archive/a-brief-introduction/) and subscribe.
complexity as entropy
https://explaining.software/archive/complexity-as-entropy/
Published: March 12, 2025 17:38
In the previous post, I characterized Ron Jeffries' meandering approach to software design as "a shrug in the face of entropy." Some readers seem to have taken this as a strange, flowery metaphor. It wasn't.
In this newsletter, our analytic framework isβ¦