index.md (3992B)
1 Philosophy 2 ========== 3 We are the home of quality software such as [dwm](//dwm.suckless.org), 4 [dmenu](//tools.suckless.org/dmenu), [st](//st.suckless.org/) and plenty of 5 other [tools](//tools.suckless.org), with a focus on simplicity, clarity and 6 frugality. Our philosophy is about keeping things simple, minimal and usable. 7 We believe this should become the mainstream philosophy in the IT sector. 8 Unfortunately, the tendency for complex, error-prone and slow software seems to 9 be prevalent in the present-day software industry. We intend to prove the 10 opposite with our software projects. 11 12 Our project focuses on advanced and experienced computer users. In contrast 13 with the usual proprietary software world or many mainstream open source 14 projects that focus more on average and non-technical end users, we think that 15 experienced users are mostly ignored. This is particularly true for user 16 interfaces, such as graphical environments on desktop computers, on mobile 17 devices, and in so-called Web applications. We believe that the market of 18 experienced users is growing continuously, with each user looking for more 19 appropriate solutions for his/her work style. 20 21 Designing simple and elegant software is far more difficult than letting ad-hoc 22 or over-ambitious features obscure the code over time. However one has to pay 23 this price to achieve reliability and maintainability. Furthermore, minimalism 24 results in reasonable and attainable goals. We strive to maintain minimalism 25 and clarity to drive development to completion. 26 27 Manifest 28 -------- 29 Many (open source) hackers are proud if they achieve large amounts of code, 30 because they believe the more lines of code they've written, the more progress 31 they have made. The more progress they have made, the more skilled they are. 32 This is simply a delusion. 33 34 Most hackers actually don't care much about code quality. Thus, if they get 35 something working which seems to solve a problem, they stick with it. If this 36 kind of software development is applied to the same source code throughout its 37 entire life-cycle, we're left with large amounts of code, a totally screwed 38 code structure, and a flawed system design. This is because of a lack of 39 conceptual clarity and integrity in the development process. 40 41 Code complexity is the mother of bloated, hard to use, and totally inconsistent 42 software. With complex code, problems are solved in suboptimal ways, valuable 43 resources are endlessly tied up, performance slows to a halt, and 44 vulnerabilities become a commonplace. The only solution is to scrap the entire 45 project and rewrite it from scratch. 46 47 The bad news: quality rewrites rarely happen, because hackers are proud of 48 large amounts of code. They think they understand the complexity in the code, 49 thus there's no need to rewrite it. They think of themselves as masterminds, 50 understanding what others can never hope to grasp. To these types, complex 51 software is the ideal. 52 53 Ingenious ideas are simple. Ingenious software is simple. Simplicity is the 54 heart of the Unix philosophy. The more code lines you have removed, the more 55 progress you have made. As the number of lines of code in your software 56 shrinks, the more skilled you have become and the less your software sucks. 57 58 Related links 59 ------------- 60 * [The Duct Tape Programmer](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2009/09/23.html) 61 * [Why should I have written ZeroMQ in C, not C++](http://www.250bpm.com/blog:4) 62 * [Best practices in application architecture: Use layers to decouple](http://geekandpoke.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341d3df553ef014e5f920093970c-pi) 63 * [Facebook's code quality problem](http://www.darkcoding.net/software/facebooks-code-quality-problem/) 64 * [Minimal Viable Programs](http://joearms.github.io/published/2014-06-25-minimal-viable-program.html) 65 * [Why I Write Games in C](http://jonathanwhiting.com/writing/blog/games_in_c/) 66 * [Use of command-line tools for effective data processing](https://adamdrake.com/command-line-tools-can-be-235x-faster-than-your-hadoop-cluster.html)