His real point is that something can be "simple and powerful." In order to sound edgy he subverts the meaning of complex into something that it doesn't mean (powerful), and bases his entire argument on this sleight of hand. (leading to statements that, out of his twisted context, are totally bewildering like "its capabilities are complex".)
His argument about simplicity and complexity not being mutually exclusive is a matter of definition, and thus he undermines others by foisting his definition into their mouths and then screaming bloody murder when he deduces that changing the premises of someone's argument does indeed damage its conclusions.
Among other things I think his comparison of stats between Mongrel and Fogbugz is fundamentally broken. Mongrel is among other things free. Beyond the intense need to brag about his project's success I can't see any legitimate reason for making that particular comparison.
(Beyond this point I rant about his usage of Hangul for his example, feel free to skip rest of post.)
His comprehension of the Korean writing system, which is one of his "powerful" points, seems superficial at best. Hangul is a language that was designed by a small group of advisors when the royalty realized most koreans were illiterate (not enough resources to spend learning chinese kanji). How the hell are we supposed to be surprised that something explicitly designed to be simple, in fact, turned out to be simple? Some extra points can be deducted for the fact that they stopped using hangul for several hundred years until it was institutionalized by the strong nationalist movement post WWII and made the official writing system in an effort to establish a unique Korean culture. Additionally we can pause curiously while noting that the average Korean still uses 700-800 Chinese kanji in daily life, and that academic papers still use the kanji for particularly esoteric or complex concepts (although this is increasingly discouraged as it is viewed as elitism). He crucifies Joel and Don for using limited examples to justify a point... and then use a single example to prove his, along with unsubstantiated claims about linguistic researchers. The Japanese katakana alphabet can represent many words very well... until you try to do one with an L in it, and then it fails utterly. Using one contrived example wouldn't reveal that, and its the same reason I doubt his point about hangul.
Beyond technicalities, its ignorant to conflate the creation of one small group of individuals six hundred years ago with the cultural preferences of modern Korea. Using something as an example never works out if you don't actually know about it.
I've never seen a single blog post wander in so many directions. Fogbugz. The nuclear arms race. Korea. The virtues of the Korean writing system. Japanese WWII atrocities. Fogbugz. Ruby. Tourism in Asia. Open source.
The irony could be mistaken for satire if it wasn't so unfunny. He rants about Joel making up numbers, and then does the exact same thing. His general call for others to cite references to back up their claims are preceded and followed immediately by his own bold, unsubstantiated claims.
So I'm thinking, "Well, I've never heard of this bug tracker called 'mongrel' so I'll check it out...". Turns out "Mongrel" is a web server and not a bug tracker. So, I'm guessing Zed never heard the one about the apple and the orange.
...I read up until he started criticising the Apache web server. Now, I won't claim to be an expert, but I'm guessing there's a reason beyong it being a "big turd" for the 2 billion installations.
Oh, well. Tip to writers: As long as you are anonymous, pour on the bile. Who cares? But when you've got your name attached, don't actively try to make every enemy you can.
His argument about simplicity and complexity not being mutually exclusive is a matter of definition, and thus he undermines others by foisting his definition into their mouths and then screaming bloody murder when he deduces that changing the premises of someone's argument does indeed damage its conclusions.
Among other things I think his comparison of stats between Mongrel and Fogbugz is fundamentally broken. Mongrel is among other things free. Beyond the intense need to brag about his project's success I can't see any legitimate reason for making that particular comparison.
(Beyond this point I rant about his usage of Hangul for his example, feel free to skip rest of post.)
His comprehension of the Korean writing system, which is one of his "powerful" points, seems superficial at best. Hangul is a language that was designed by a small group of advisors when the royalty realized most koreans were illiterate (not enough resources to spend learning chinese kanji). How the hell are we supposed to be surprised that something explicitly designed to be simple, in fact, turned out to be simple? Some extra points can be deducted for the fact that they stopped using hangul for several hundred years until it was institutionalized by the strong nationalist movement post WWII and made the official writing system in an effort to establish a unique Korean culture. Additionally we can pause curiously while noting that the average Korean still uses 700-800 Chinese kanji in daily life, and that academic papers still use the kanji for particularly esoteric or complex concepts (although this is increasingly discouraged as it is viewed as elitism). He crucifies Joel and Don for using limited examples to justify a point... and then use a single example to prove his, along with unsubstantiated claims about linguistic researchers. The Japanese katakana alphabet can represent many words very well... until you try to do one with an L in it, and then it fails utterly. Using one contrived example wouldn't reveal that, and its the same reason I doubt his point about hangul.
Beyond technicalities, its ignorant to conflate the creation of one small group of individuals six hundred years ago with the cultural preferences of modern Korea. Using something as an example never works out if you don't actually know about it.