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@ -7,7 +7,7 @@ In general bootstrapping (from the idiom "pull yourself up by your bootstraps"),
## Bootstrapping: Making Dependency-Free Software
Bootstrapping as a general principle can aid us in creation of extremely free technology by greatly minimizing all its [dependencies](dependency.md), we are able to create a small amount of code that will self-establish our whole computing environment with only very small effort during the process.
Bootstrapping as a general principle can aid us in creation of extremely free technology by greatly minimizing all its [dependencies](dependency.md), we are able to create a small amount of code that will self-establish our whole computing environment with only very small effort during the process. The topic mostly revolves around designing [programming language](programming_language.md) [compilers](compiler.md), but in general we may be talking about bootstrapping whole computing environments, operating systems etc.
**Why be concerned with bootstrapping when we already have our systems set up?** There are many reasons, one of the notable ones is that we may lose our current technology due to societal [collapse](collapse.md), which is not improbable, it keeps happening throughout history over and over, so many people fear (rightfully so) that if by whatever disaster we lose our current computers, Internet etc., we will also lose with it all modern art, data, software we so painfully developed, digitized books, inventions and so on; not talking about the horrors that will follow if we're unable to quickly reestablish our computer networks we are so dependent on. Setting up what we currently have completely from scratch would be extremely difficult, a task for centuries -- just take a while to consider all the activity and knowledge that's required around the globe to create a single computer with all its billions of lines of code worth of software that makes it work. Knowledge of old technology gets lost -- to make modern computers we first needed older, primitive computers, but now that we only have modern computers no one remembers anymore how to make the older computers -- if we lose the current ones, we won't be able to make them, we will lack the tools. Another reason for bootstrapping is independence of technology which brings e.g. [freedom](freedom.md) (your operating system being able to be set up anywhere without some corporation's proprietary driver or hardware unit is pursued by many), robustness, simplicity, ability to bring existing software to new platforms and so on, i.e. things that are practical even in current world.