The first lesson is quite obvious. I’ll let you guess the second one:
So, Marissa ran an experiment where Google increased the number of search results to thirty. Traffic and revenue from Google searchers in the experimental group dropped by 20%.
After a bit of looking, Marissa explained that they found an uncontrolled variable. The page with 10 results took .4 seconds to generate. The page with 30 results took .9 seconds.
Half a second delay caused a 20% drop in traffic. Half a second delay killed user satisfaction.
As an added bonus, have you ever wondered why enterprise software sucks?
My point is that the architectural complexity of these applications inhibit a person’s understanding of the code. … Without actually doing anything, applications are becoming too complex to understand, build, and maintain.
Every layer makes perfect sense in isolation. The cracks start showing when you pile them up into a mega-architecture, and you can clearly see how some of the layers cancel each other out.
† The fallacy of user-driven: ruining the software one feature at a time when there’s no filter between what users want and what the vendor provides.