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@ -8,7 +8,7 @@ Antoine de Saint-Exupery sums it up with a quote: *we achieve perfection not whe
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**[Forth](forth.md)** is perhaps the best example of software minimalism and demonstrates that clever, strictly minimalist design can be absolutely superior to the best efforts of maximalists. Languages such as Scheme [Lisp](lisp.md) show that minimalism can also be applied on high level of [abstraction](abstraction.md).
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Minimalism as a general concept is also immensely important in [art](art.md), [religion](religion.md) and other parts of [culture](culture.md) and whole society, for example in fine art, architecture and design we find great use of it, and basically every major religion values frugality and letting go of material desire in order to distill the truly important part of one's existence, be it [Christianity](christianity.md), [Islan](islam.md) or [Buddhism](buddhism.md) -- in Buddhism it's even the case that one of the highest principles is that of "emptiness", called Sunyata, and while westerners spoiled by [consumerism](consumerism.md) tend to feel negatively about the word "empty", in east it bears a positive connotation. When asked about getting better at acting, Ben Kingsley answered "You can learn to say something with one gesture instead of nine.", implying that mastery lies in learning to do less. And so with this ever present minimalism it comes as no surprise there also exists the generalized concept of **life minimalism** which applies said wisdom and philosophy to all areas of [life](life.md) and which numerous technological minimalists quite naturally start to follow along the way -- life minimalism is about letting go of objects, thoughts and desires that aren't necessarily needed because such things enslave us and mostly just make us more miserable; from time to time you should meditate a little bit about what it is that you really want and need and only keep that. Indeed this is nothing new under the Sun, this wisdom has been present for as long as humans have existed, most religions and philosophers saw a great value in [asceticism](asceticism.md), frugality and even poverty, as owning little leads to [freedom](freedom.md). For instance owning a [car](car.md) is kind of a slavery, you have to clean it, protect it, repair it, [maintain](maintenance.md) it, pay for parking space, pay for gas, pay for insurance -- this is not a small commitment and you sacrifice a significant part of your life and [head space](head_space.md) to it (especially considering additional commitments of similar magnitude towards your house, garden, clothes, electronics, furniture, pets, bank accounts, social networks and so forth), a minimalist will rather choose to get a simple [suckless](suckless.md) bicycle, travel by public transport or simply walk. Life minimalism is also much healthier both for the individual and for whole society. A man who learns to live with very little starts to find much more enjoyment in mundane things thereafter, a simple pleasure such as an extra meal once a week suddenly feels like it's Christmas, unlike to someone who overeats daily and can hardly take any extra pleasure in food at all. It is also proven (despite you disagreeing with it) that people living in scarcity are friendlier to each other, i.e. a community of people living with little are more [socialist](socialism.md), sharing, loving and caring, without crime and hostility, unlike communities of overstimulated fat depressed consumers addicted to endless increase of pleasure, demanding more and more from the day, eventually ending up only with [competition](competition.md) and hostility on their mind.
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Minimalism as a general concept is also immensely important in [art](art.md), [religion](religion.md) and other parts of [culture](culture.md) and whole society, for example in fine art, architecture and design we find great use of it, and basically every major religion values frugality and letting go of material desire in order to distill the truly important part of one's existence, be it [Christianity](christianity.md), [Islam](islam.md) or [Buddhism](buddhism.md) -- in Buddhism it's even the case that one of the highest principles is that of "emptiness", called Sunyata, and while westerners spoiled by [consumerism](consumerism.md) tend to feel negatively about the word "empty", in east it bears a positive connotation. When asked about getting better at acting, Ben Kingsley answered "You can learn to say something with one gesture instead of nine.", implying that mastery lies in learning to do less. And so with this ever present minimalism it comes as no surprise there also exists the generalized concept of **life minimalism** which applies said wisdom and philosophy to all areas of [life](life.md) and which numerous technological minimalists quite naturally start to follow along the way -- life minimalism is about letting go of objects, thoughts and desires that aren't necessarily needed because such things enslave us and mostly just make us more miserable; from time to time you should meditate a little bit about what it is that you really want and need and only keep that. Indeed this is nothing new under the Sun, this wisdom has been present for as long as humans have existed, most religions and philosophers saw a great value in [asceticism](asceticism.md), frugality and even poverty, as owning little leads to [freedom](freedom.md). For instance owning a [car](car.md) is kind of a slavery, you have to clean it, protect it, repair it, [maintain](maintenance.md) it, pay for parking space, pay for gas, pay for insurance -- this is not a small commitment and you sacrifice a significant part of your life and [head space](head_space.md) to it (especially considering additional commitments of similar magnitude towards your house, garden, clothes, electronics, furniture, pets, bank accounts, social networks and so forth), a minimalist will rather choose to get a simple [suckless](suckless.md) bicycle, travel by public transport or simply walk. Life minimalism is also much healthier both for the individual and for whole society. A man who learns to live with very little starts to find much more enjoyment in mundane things thereafter, a simple pleasure such as an extra meal once a week suddenly feels like it's Christmas, unlike to someone who overeats daily and can hardly take any extra pleasure in food at all. It is also proven (despite you disagreeing with it) that people living in scarcity are friendlier to each other, i.e. a community of people living with little are more [socialist](socialism.md), sharing, loving and caring, without crime and hostility, unlike communities of overstimulated fat depressed consumers addicted to endless increase of pleasure, demanding more and more from the day, eventually ending up only with [competition](competition.md) and hostility on their mind.
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Minimalism is a sign of high [IQ](iq.md) and better developed, [more cultivated](unretard.md) mind, it is something that requires an intellect strong enough to overcome the human instinct for hoarding to which the unintelligent is a slave -- an instinct that was important in times of scarce resources but one that's become a harmful curse in times when certain resources became so abundant that they can be consumed without end. It is like with overeating: the intelligent man is able to restrain from unhealthy overeating to which he is pushed by his instinct.
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@ -22,7 +22,7 @@ There is a so called *[airplane rule](airplane_rule.md)* that states a plane wit
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[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.
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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):
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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 lead 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):
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- [suckless](suckless.md)
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- [cat-v](cat_v.md)
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