Simple means few moving parts. Easy means familiar and close at hand.
Rich Hickey's distinction: simple is about structure, easy is about familiarity. Git is simple but not easy. jQuery is easy but not simple. Products that are easy can be complex underneath, and that debt compounds.
| Simple | Easy |
|---|---|
| Few parts, few tangles | Feels familiar |
| Hard to learn, pays off long-term | Quick to start |
| Compositional | Packaged |
| Objective | Subjective |
Kubernetes is simple conceptually and famously not easy. Heroku is easy on the surface but papers over real complexity — which surfaces when you outgrow it.