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minimalism.md
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*No gain, no pain.*
In context of [technology](tech.md) minimalism is a design philosophy which puts great emphasis on [simplicity](kiss.md), it says technology should be as simple as possible while still achieving given goal, possibly even a little bit simpler. Minimalism is one of the most (if not the most) important concepts in [programming](programming.md) and technology in general, it could almost be said that becoming a true expert in technology is strongly connected to realizing the importance of simplicity (see e.g. [Unix philosophy](unix_philosophy.md)). One of the first things to stress about minimalism is that it's firstly about **internal simplicity**, i.e. the simplicity of design/repairing/[hacking](hacking.md), and only secondly about the simplicity from the [user](user.md)'s point of view (otherwise we are only dealing with [pseudominimalism](pseudominimalism.md)). The opposite of minimalism is [maximalism](maximalism.md).
In the context of [technology](tech.md) minimalism is a design philosophy which puts great emphasis on [simplicity](kiss.md), it says technology should be as simple as possible while still achieving given goal, possibly even a little bit simpler. Minimalism is one of the most (if not the most) important concepts in [programming](programming.md) and technology in general, it could almost be said that becoming a true expert in technology is strongly connected to realizing the importance of simplicity (see e.g. [Unix philosophy](unix_philosophy.md)). One of the first things to stress about minimalism is that it's firstly about **internal simplicity**, i.e. the simplicity of design/repairing/[hacking](hacking.md), and only secondly about the simplicity from the [user](user.md)'s point of view (otherwise we are only dealing with [pseudominimalism](pseudominimalism.md)). The opposite of minimalism is [maximalism](maximalism.md).
Antoine de Saint-Exupery sums it up with a quote: *we achieve perfection not when there is nothing more to add but when there is nothing left to take away.*
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There is a so called *[airplane rule](airplane_rule.md)* that states a plane with two engines has twice as many engine problems than a plane with a single engine.
[Alan Kay](alan_kay.md), a famous [hacker](hacking.md), let himself be heard that he experienced a revelation upon reading manual to the [Lisp](lisp.md) programming language once he saw that the whole programming language's code was written on half a page in the manual itself. "These are Maxwell’s Equations of software!" he exclaimed -- this is the essence of true programming. Not huge codebases maintained by hundreds of programmers, but mathematics, seeking minimal equations and [beauty](beauty.md) are the interest of a true programmer.
[Alan Kay](alan_kay.md), a famous [hacker](hacking.md), once said he experienced a revelation upon reading the manual to the [Lisp](lisp.md) programming language once he realized the whole programming language's code was written on half a page in the manual itself. "These are Maxwell’s Equations of software!" he exclaimed -- this is the essence of true programming. Not colossal codebases maintained by hundreds of programmers, but mathematics, seeking minimal equations and [beauty](beauty.md) are the interest of a true programmer.
Up until recently in [history](history.md) it was evident to every engineer that *the better machine is that with fewer moving parts*. This still seems to hold for example in [mathematics](math.md), a field not yet so spoiled by crippling commercialization and mostly inhabited by the smartest people -- there is a tendency to look for the most minimal equations and such equations are considered [beautiful](beauty.md). To laymen it's not obvious and the concept definitely seems counterintuitive, but every programmer eventually learns that a "more sophisticated" solution will not only bring the cost of added overhead, but may oftentimes leads to simply giving worse overall results -- typical example are for example [pseudorandom](pseudorandomness.md) number generators in which adding more operators typically WORSENS the quality of the generated sequence. Science knows the rule of simplicity as the [Occam's razor](occams_razor.md): the simplest explanation should be preferred. In technology invaded by aggressive commercialization the situation is different, minimalism lives only in the underground and is ridiculed by the mainstream propaganda. Some of the minimalist movements, terms and concepts at least somewhat connected to minimalism include (watch out for [SJW](sjw.md)s, [pseudominimalism](pseudominimalism.md), Nazis etc., we don't automatically fully embrace all things on this list):