Exposing the beauty in a problem

I was recently reminded of this great quote:

“When I’m working on a problem, I never think about beauty. I think only how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.” - R. Buckminster Fuller

Sometimes this happens when working in the world of software.

There have been occasions where I have been working on a design and the solution just seems to fall out almost naturally - and in most cases where this has happened the beauty becomes apparent in the ease and clarity that the approach can be built on and extended.

I have been working on a coding problem and got so deep in to it that only when I stepped back could I see ways in which it could be simplified and how beautiful the solution is. It felt like the solution was obvious and you wondered why you didn’t see it in the first place.

Sometimes a focus on simplicity and beauty from the beginning will hide the solution and it is only once you solve the problem that the next step becomes visible. There is no way you would have found this from the beginning without taking the problem solving route.

It is a fantastic feeling when this happens and you know you have the right solution; it is a feeling of pure creation.