Less Is More? More Is Less?

This one comes out of my work on the Pseudo 3D project, a tool I genuinely enjoyed building and had far too many ideas for.

At one of our weekly updates, there came a decision to strip functionality out of the tool I had made. Not because it was broken, but because it had quietly grown into a Swiss army knife.

And a Swiss army knife feels great. Look at everything it can do. But it is rarely elegant, and every blade on it still has to be maintained. Each little attachment needs sharpening and polishing and testing, or the whole thing stops feeling trustworthy. The more it does, the more there is to keep from rusting.

A tool that does one thing can be the opposite. It can be sharp, elegant, and small enough to actually fit in the toolbox and get reached for without a second thought. One job, done cleanly, with nothing extra to babysit.

It sucks a little to retire ideas I liked, but I guess that is the mindset I want to keep when building tools. Less surface area, less to maintain, more confidence that each piece does exactly what it claims.

Once the Pseudo 3D project is cleared for sharing, I will write more about what it actually was. For now, I just want to remind myself that a small knife you trust beats a big one you have to constantly babysit.