Jonathan Blow

https://suckless.org  ? The agenda seems to be there.

I think they have generally the right idea, but it looks like they have been around for a number of years and not necessarily that much software has been made? I suspect because they are still tangled up in the complexity of unix, and why if you want to simplify things would

you pick awk as one of the few things you rewrite ... it doesn't make sense to me, because the real problem is the unix philosophy, not awk. 'st' seems alright, except the fact that it's limited to X-Windows is again a big problem (and probably drives complexity).

Looking more, I see that sbase has a lot of programs in it (it was not obvious from the page), but ... again it's just replicating the unix complexity but making it simpler. That's fine, but the real problem is the unix complexity.

Unix Philosophy was fine in the early days of Unix, but now it's 50 years later, if we don't have a better idea of how to do things by now, we must really suck. Today we see that the system has turned into a huge number of programs, most of which most people don't understand,

that are very hard to use unless you are already an expert, and that, when put together via pipes, result in buggy programs (in the same way that non-statically-typed languages like js result in buggy programs). Meanwhile we also do code sharing with libraries. Well ... why

not simplify to just libraries? That is what I would do.

The solution to software: ADD MORE SOFTWARE

No, the solution to software is to subtract most software by adding in a structural element that does what those things do, but with much less. So it's subtraction by replacement, not adding.

Yeah. I was sarcastic. I'm excited to see if somebody actually has an idea how to go about that. But I do believe, no matter how well intentioned the agenda might be, in the end it will just add to the mess. So I think that the best thing one can do is to "not add anything new".

If you believe this then nothing can ever get better and the world falls into ruin. But in reality things are made better all the time, and real engineers know this, it's the basis of the profession.

I understand... Maybe it's just difficult to find something that can be replaced.

As I said in a speech last week, it's actually very easy, because all software has this problem. You can't throw a pebble without hitting something that can be simplified hugely.

Can you name one or two examples of software that has succeeded in simplifying an area that was complex before? (I'd nominate git.)

hahaha we are thinking about totally different things then. Why do you think git is simple?

Git is based on simple data structures (objects, trees) and sound abstractions (lightweight branches, remotes). Its architecture teases apart ("decomplects" in the Rich Hickey sense) aspects that can be separated conceptually.

I agree that at the core is a technically simple idea, but in terms of actual use git is a disaster.

I think it's useful to keep those two things separate though. It can be a mistake to sacrifice simplicity to improve ease of use.

Git is full of bloat. It is often easier to solve a particular problem by copying your files to another directory, deleting everything in the repository folder, cloning again and merging by hand.