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The thing I like about the suckless people and their tools is not breaking what works. Seriously, the primary problem with software today in my assessment is ch

The thing I like about the suckless people and their tools is not breaking what works. Seriously, the primary problem with software today in my assessment is churn. Things change way too fast and you wonder how people get anything done as aging things are constantly being deprecated instead of being considered stabilized. I'm not really a developer (I'm a computational scientist, so I am a different kind of developer), so I'm not sure if this is my place to complain but if I had the time I'd write a whole article about it, I just don't think anyone would care to listen. On the other hand, the thing that I do not like about suckless and the minimal hacker types in general is just the staunch elitism. I think you'll get some level of elitism with any group but in this case, with the minimalism comes a bit of a sense of hostility to new users who just don't think your way. It feels like there is no in between in the foss world, either people seem to be friendly and kind with TOCs and all that but force churn every few years or are militantly minimal and just super unpleasant as people. Then again, I think the thing I want isn't really minimalism, stability to me is the thing that is lacking greatly in the open source world which is sort of a side effect of the minimalism.

carapace 6y ago
> Seriously, the primary problem with software today in my assessment is churn. I agree. The machines are wicked fast, most of the needful algorithms are already sussed out, not to mention how ML solves another swath of problems. Today most "programming" should consist of picking and configuring existing software, and this should be seen as a big win and a sign of maturity. (Instead we have Python 3 and Rust and... <rant omitted>) So, yes, we need the outside view, please complain! In re: elitism and hostility, remember that most of the old-school programmers are old enough to have grown up before nerds became cool, so some of that grows out of resentment and alienation.
- nerdponx 6y ago
  Python 3 is a great example of "picking and configuring existing software". If it's not in the standard library, it's on PyPI. A lot of my Python code is just gluing together high-level functionality from various libraries. It's beautiful. You can complain about this or that aspect of language design, but then you also have to look at what a clusterfuck of historical accidents C and C++ are. Like what you like, but at least be correct about why you like what you like (and why you don't like what you don't like).
lioeters 6y ago
> militantly minimal Thanks for a new phrase of the day, that describes the phenomenon well. At some point it can go beyond being a practical matter, and crosses over into fashion and dogma. > the primary problem with software today..is churn > stability..is lacking greatly in the open source world This makes me think, there's a difference between minimalism and simplicity. Software that's stable, backward compatible, with a small and well-defined interface - there are rare gems out there that achieve this simplicity, where it can be used every day for years and just works like a champ.

carapace 6y ago

> Seriously, the primary problem with software today in my assessment is churn. I agree. The machines are wicked fast, most of the needful algorithms are already sussed out, not to mention how ML solves another swath of problems. Today most "programming" should consist of picking and configuring existing software, and this should be seen as a big win and a sign of maturity. (Instead we have Python 3 and Rust and... <rant omitted>) So, yes, we need the outside view, please complain! In re: elitism and hostility, remember that most of the old-school programmers are old enough to have grown up before nerds became cool, so some of that grows out of resentment and alienation.

nerdponx 6y ago
Python 3 is a great example of "picking and configuring existing software". If it's not in the standard library, it's on PyPI. A lot of my Python code is just gluing together high-level functionality from various libraries. It's beautiful. You can complain about this or that aspect of language design, but then you also have to look at what a clusterfuck of historical accidents C and C++ are. Like what you like, but at least be correct about why you like what you like (and why you don't like what you don't like).

lioeters 6y ago

> militantly minimal Thanks for a new phrase of the day, that describes the phenomenon well. At some point it can go beyond being a practical matter, and crosses over into fashion and dogma. > the primary problem with software today..is churn > stability..is lacking greatly in the open source world This makes me think, there's a difference between minimalism and simplicity. Software that's stable, backward compatible, with a small and well-defined interface - there are rare gems out there that achieve this simplicity, where it can be used every day for years and just works like a champ.