February 21, 2026
Brace for braid wars
Declarative, Inquisitive, then Imperative (2017) [pdf]
Programmers clash over ‘simple vs easy’—and one hero saves the link
TLDR: A 2017 PDF re-ignites the “simple vs easy” debate using the minimalist Forth language as a lightning rod. The lone comment archives the link, while the wider chatter pits minimalism lovers against safety seekers, highlighting both the power of simplicity and the need to preserve tech knowledge.
Samuel A. Falvo II’s 2017 PDF revives Rich Hickey’s famous “Simple Made Easy” challenge: what’s simple (one clean idea) vs what’s easy (close at hand)? Falvo points at Forth, the minimalist language that ditches heavy syntax and types, then drops the mic with a warning: get one thing wrong and the whole house of cards falls. Cue the classic split—minimalism fans cheer “focus on what matters,” while safety-first readers side-eye the global state and typed operators, muttering “math on hard mode.”
The comments? Almost silent… except for one power move: lioeters swoops in with an archived copy, because link rot is the real final boss. Around the community, the usual memes resurface: “one braid vs many braids” turns into haircare jokes; “house of cards” summons Jenga gifs; and “DIY aggregates” gets the “build-your-own furniture” treatment. The spiciest debate remains familiar—do conventions (defaults you don’t have to configure) make life easier, or just hide complexity until it bites? Fans of Forth call that rawness a feature (“touch state carefully”), skeptics call it stress. The vibe: vintage minimalism, modern anxiety, and archivists keeping receipts with flair.
Key Points
- •The article applies Rich Hickey’s “simple vs. complex” and “easy vs. hard” distinctions to evaluate Forth.
- •Forth is described as simple due to minimal syntax and focus on operational semantics, but it also complects concerns like buffer management, dynamic scoping, and context.
- •Forth is easy to learn and use, with rapid feedback and high code locality, yet hard aspects include typed operators, reliance on global state, and DIY aggregates.
- •The concept of “convention over configuration” is introduced and defined to frame trade-offs in developer decision-making and flexibility.
- •A code comparison shows that Forth’s concise conventions can make architecture implicit, requiring mental visualization and risking entanglement of semantics with architecture.