Here are some takeaways from watching a talk by Martin Odersky, the founder of Scala.

As programmers, the biggest difficulty we face is complexity.

  • i.e. when it is easier/more attractive to throw away existing code and start again, rather than understand and support the existing code

Big takeaway: If there are multiple ways to solve a problem, pick the simplest one that does the trick.

More reading: http://www.lihaoyi.com/post/StrategicScalaStylePrincipleofLeastPower.html#complexity-is-your-enemy

And the video: