4 ms·

Another way of putting that is "you are required to become a developer in order to use the tool." Great for developer community, but not great for the average u

by fouric 5y ago

Another way of putting that is "you are required to become a developer in order to use the tool." Great for developer community, but not great for the average user (or even the above-average user - say, 98th percentile) who wants to use computers for the purpose for which they were intended (and are amazing at) - labor-saving devices. Heck, even as a developer, I would always rather use a tool that doesn't require me to learn the internals in order for me to use it at a basic level of proficiency. Wouldn't you? (probably not in your specific case - I'm addressing the median HN user) Isn't that the point of abstraction and API boundaries? If your goal is to make software that artificially requires others to invest a lot of needless time and effort in order to use it, or if you like creating beautiful pieces of code-art then suckless is for you. If your goal is to build software that saves other humans time and effort, the suckless philosophy is absolutely the opposite thing of what you want[1]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29941395 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29941395

deleted 5y ago
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jovial_cavalier 5y ago
>I would always rather use a tool that doesn't require me to learn the internals in order for me to use it at a basic level of proficiency. Wouldn't you? In general, I agree, but there is a lot to be said for stripping the cruft out of systems that should be simple. Window management is not complicated - the fact that dwm is functional by default at <2k lines of C is evidence of this. >If your goal is to make software that artificially requires others to invest a lot of needless time and effort in order to use it... It is not made artificially difficult. It is just not made artificially easy either. The codebase is organized in a way that optimizes reading it and understanding its function. If you have done anything in C before, you will be up and making small modifications within 10-20 minutes. Despite the tongue-in-cheek celebration of "elitism," people are more than happy to take a look at your code and tell you what you are doing wrong, and getting my dwm desktop to where I want it took about an afternoon, which is not something I can say of i3, GNOME, KDE, etc. All of that said, the whole point is that it's not for everyone. If you don't like it, don't use it!

by fouric 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

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jovial_cavalier 5y ago

>I would always rather use a tool that doesn't require me to learn the internals in order for me to use it at a basic level of proficiency. Wouldn't you? In general, I agree, but there is a lot to be said for stripping the cruft out of systems that should be simple. Window management is not complicated - the fact that dwm is functional by default at <2k lines of C is evidence of this. >If your goal is to make software that artificially requires others to invest a lot of needless time and effort in order to use it... It is not made artificially difficult. It is just not made artificially easy either. The codebase is organized in a way that optimizes reading it and understanding its function. If you have done anything in C before, you will be up and making small modifications within 10-20 minutes. Despite the tongue-in-cheek celebration of "elitism," people are more than happy to take a look at your code and tell you what you are doing wrong, and getting my dwm desktop to where I want it took about an afternoon, which is not something I can say of i3, GNOME, KDE, etc. All of that said, the whole point is that it's not for everyone. If you don't like it, don't use it!