---
title: Are Poor Applications Better Than Rich Applications?
date: 2007-05-03T16:37:16Z
modified: 2007-05-03T16:37:16Z
permalink: "https://redmonk.com/jgovernor/are-poor-applications-better-than-rich-applications/"
type: post
status: publish
excerpt: ""
wpid: 1081
categories:
  - Uncategorized
timestamp: 2007-05-03T16:37:16Z
tags:
  - Uncategorized
---

Just wondering. Cote rounds up all the goodness-[ all that client experience as brand gubbins](http://www.redmonk.com/cote/2007/05/01/ria-stacks-comin-atcha-silverlight-astoria-apollo-livecycle-data-services-lighting-the-dark-data/). But I am quite a fan of poor applications. I don’t read picture books except with my 19 month old. I love [delicious](http://del.icio.us/jamesgovernor). I love [twitter](http://twitter.com/). I am expecting to love [Dopplr](http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/JamesGovernorsMonkchips/~3/113624254/). When I listen to music I don’t sit and watch the visualisations. I am always on the lookout for new ways to intertwingle communities and text. I just think its important we maintain some sense of where we came from, why simple text services are so useful, and why we shouldnt be making things whizbang for their own sake. It would be a real shame if we had to go back to the bad old days of Flash idiocy before we remembered that making an application more “rich” doesnt always always make it better. Many blogs are now cutting back on all the extraneous clutter- simplicity blogs is a major theme. There are even blogs [dedicated to minimalism in blogging](http://www.plaintxt.org/2006/06/13/the-best-minimalist-wordpress-themes/). We should not lose sight of the fact that less is more. That simplicity rules. I hope [Plaintxt.org](http://www.plaintxt.org/) doesn’t mind me lifting the [Dave Eggers](http://www.mcsweeneys.net/) quote wholesale, because its ludicrously apropos:

> “What very few designers realize, particularly the younger ones, is that most people would rather read something—actually read the words—than look at all of their lines and arrows and silly pictures they’ve screened back.
> 
> When the words finally reach the reader, the designer has, as often as not, rendered them almost unreadable, and so a reader moves on. But we’ve always felt that the words don’t need a whole lot of help—that a piece about searching for tigers in Ireland is not necessarily needing of a picture of tigers or of Ireland, much less blinking or screened-back ones. The words are enough, if the words are good.”

I am not sure monkchips is poor enough. The services I get most from are generally the simplest. I mean, look at Google Search. No mess, no fuss, just text.

update: [bill de hO’ra](http://www.dehora.net/journal/) fired over this link to Tim Bray [making a similar point](http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2003/11/03/CuiBono).