2.9 KiB
KISS
See also minimalism.
KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid!) is a design philosophy that favors simplicity, both internal and external (simplicity of use), technology that is as simple as possible to achieve given task. This philosophy doesn't primarily stem from laziness and a want to save time (though these are valid reasons too), but mainly from the fact that higher complexity comes with increasingly negative effects such as the cost of development, cost of maintenance, greater probability of bugs (e.g. security vulnerabilities) and failure, more dependencies. This stance is related to technology minimalism.
Under dystopian capitalism simple technology, such as simple software, has at least one more advantage related to "intellectual property": a simple solution is less likely to step on a patent landmine because such a simple solution will either be hard to patent or as more obvious will have been discovered and patented sooner and the patent is more likely to already be expired. So in this sense KISS technology is legally safer.
Apparently the term KISS originated in the US Army plane engineering: the planes needed to be repairable by stupid soldiers with limited tools under field conditions.
Examples of KISS "solutions" include:
- Using a plain text file instead of a dedicated bug tracker (TODO.txt), note taking program etc.
- Creating website in plain HTML instead of using some complex web framework such as Wordpress.
- Implementing a web left-right sweeping image gallery with HTML iframe instead of some overcomplicated JavaScript library. { Example stolen from reactionary software website. ~drummyfish }
- Supporting only ASCII instead of Unicode, it is good enough.
- Using a plain text file instead of a database system.
- Using markdown for creating documents, as opposed to using office programs such as Libreoffice.
- Using a trivial shell script for compiling your programs rather than a complex build system such as CMake.
- ...
Compared to suckless, unix philosophy and LRS, KISS is a more general term and isn't tied to any specific group or movement, it doesn't imply any specifics but rather the general overall idea of simplicity being an advantage (less is more, worse is better, ...).
KISS Linux is an example of software developed under this philosophy and adapting the term itself.