OccamsRazor

Occam's Razor is a principle in the philosophy of science that ties into TestDrivenDevelopment, the concept of Simplicity in design, and ChristopherAlexander's concept of Symmetry.

Complexity (in the bad sense) consists of distinctions which unnecessarily complicate a structure. To get simplicity, on the other hand, we need a process which questions every distinction. Any distinction which is not necessary is removed. To remove a distinction we replace it by a symmetry.

—ChristopherAlexander

The Wikipedia article on Occam's Razor has many tidbits that might be relevant for this wiki; I'm dumping them all here for the time being.

• The concept of an AdHocHypothesis as a way to prevent a theory from being falsified—this is analogous to the strategy of fixing a test failure by adding a conditional. The resulting code (i.e. the Hypothesis about how to implement the desired behavior) is likely to still, ultimately, be wrong.

• "The idea here is that a simple theory applies to more cases than a more complex one, and is thus more easily falsifiable."

• "If a sign is not necessary then it is meaningless. That is the meaning of Occam's Razor." —Wittgenstein

  • This is an argument for removing dead code.