 Welcome to an episode of let's explain why this common is dumb and I want to talk about a common comment that I get Downplaying the usefulness of minimalist or suckless software, and I want to respond to why it's a dumb I don't want to say dumb comment, but why it is a Inappropriately informed comment, so yesterday I got I get this kind of comment relatively often But yesterday I got one example of it, so I'll use it as a straw man to talk about So it comes from this guy Christian, and I'm not bullying him or anything like that I'm just responding to the comment although I reserve the right to read his comment in the dumb voice, so I will so let's read it Let me get this right you're using st from suckless because it's small So why did you apply so much patches instead of using a terminal where this features already included? Massacism just use a terminal like kitty and simply press control shift you and pick search favorite a smiley too simple All right, let's talk about this so notice the implicit assumption of comments like this The implicit assumption is people who use minimalist software or suckless Software in particular they're doing it just to be they're being masochistic They're doing it's just a big meme. They're they're all hipsters. They're doing things for no reason and They just want to make life hard on themselves That mind you this is the same thing that people who use windows and max say about people who use Linux just bear that in mind And most of you as Linux users probably think that's a stupid thing to say So I feel the same way, but again, that's an understandable thing if you don't really let me just explain to him Why okay, so let's take the example he uses the example of st versus kitty and Inserting emojis, so let's do that I actually have the source code for kitty right here I just downloaded it a second ago as an illustration and I'm gonna pull up the source code for my st build now First off, there's a misunderstanding that that minimalist software is just about lines of code There are some people who care about that. I think it is an issue something It's it's more like a symptom of a deeper problem, but in general. Yes st Even though I have patched in all these bloat features. I mean people make fun You know they they like to people complain what when I use minimal software and add-in features. I like that's what you're supposed to do But you'll see that the source code to my st build the whole thing is 7.3 megs Of course most of that is the git folder so that doesn't really count and if we look at kitty we will see that It has a good bit more 33 megs now of course most of that is the git folder as well But and also in kitty's defense they have things like images and you know lots and lots of documentation But if you compare even a built-out beefy build of st You will see to pretty much any other terminal You'll see that st is nearly always significantly smaller in terms of source source code It's not an issue about getting rid of features first off. It's an issue of getting rid of bad written code That's one of the things that suckless is about but let's talk about something more tangible Let's talk about the feature that he mentions that is Inserting smiley's emojis stuff like that. Okay, so first off you'll see in the kitty source code There is quite you have four and a half megs of that software or of you know of the source code That is about unicode input. Okay, compare that that is more than my entire st build Now I have kitty installed so I'm gonna bring it up. So here it is Now let's look at their unicode insertion thing. So again control shift u Gives you this menu and kitty to insert some kind of emoji so I can pick let's say I want that one That's my face right now or let's say So the course not everything is here. You can go to different tabs stuff like that You can type in I don't know words from it or something like that, right? So that that's a nice way of inserting emojis, but it's terribly Inefficient. Okay, let me compare that to what I use to insert emojis now I have no feature in my st build to insert emojis no feature whatsoever Because I use an external script for that and I'm gonna explain why that is better Here's what my external script looks like here, you know Basically just brings up a little menu with all the emojis and all their names and you just start typing a name And you get your emoji. Okay, you can insert that simple as that now First off mine is quite a bit more more ergonomic. You just have the menu You don't have to really think really think about it. You just start typing. It's sort of like one of those tabs over here I guess the the yeah f2 tab but here is the superiority of My system versus theirs and it has to do with it being a minimalist piece of software the superiority is this is not built into my Terminal it is a general all-purpose script that works on my terminal. It works on my browser It works on a messenger application. I might use and it works on email It works on every program or even if I just want to put something in my clipboard I can always you know use this to get some kind of Emoji no matter what okay. It just always works Whereas the kitty way of inserting emojis is specific to kitty now here is the big problem Here here is one of the reasons minimalist software is so much better If you you if you have the kitty mindset. Oh, we'll just program four and a half megs into our terminal build for inserting emojis A you have to make sure that's good, but then you have nothing for inserting emojis in other programs So I guess in my environment I'm supposed to have an emoji insertion Mechanism in my terminal build one in my browser one in my messenger application one of my email one in every single program that I have The minimalist mindset the suckless mindset is that's stupid. That's a waste of time You should just have one general all-purpose script where you can select an emoji and insert it or do any kind of operation Separate event each individual program and insert that and it does not add It's a feature that anyone including you even if you use none of my software you could download and use this feature itself So it's not reliant on anything and it is useful for everything Okay, so that is why it's a sort of inefficient thing to have now. Let's actually compare now I mentioned a second ago Let's go back to kitty And we'll go we'll look again at what was the size of all this? Okay. Yeah, so four and a half megs Let's compare that to the economicness of my system for doing it. So again, I have it in here It's actually well, there are two files one is the emoji file that I have and I'll open that up It's local share larbs Emoji and this is the file I opened up in the last video It is literally just a list of all the emojis I happen to keep there, you know, a little, uh, I don't know hex whatever it is the Unicode not sequencer whatever and Of course a picture of the emoji And that that's all the input to all the input you need now the script that actually pops up the menu is This one here D menu Unicode And this is all it is so they have four and a half megs I just have one single file here, which is let's actually see how big this file is It is less than a single leg. Okay, and this little script that is 20 lines could probably be way less, frankly that takes the Content of that file Provides it as a menu with D menu and then allows you to just type in and whatever you select it copies to your clipboard And even gives you a little notification just to make sure you click the right thing That is not even necessary. You wouldn't even need to do that So my feature compared to that four and a half megs It is much more useful because you can use it with any program at any time and also it is much more minimal It's basically as minimal as it can get all it is the input is just a file with emojis and The script that's doing the the heavy lifting. I mean, it's not even that heavy It just it just does what you want and that's about it So that is what suckless software is about minimalist software. It's not an issue of oh Just deciding oh emojis are bloat I'm not gonna use emojis or something like that or deciding that this feature or that feature is stupid And you want to make you make life difficult for yourself. So you're not gonna use it That is absolutely a hundred percent not what it's about. It's about thinking Where is the most efficient place to have that kind of operation? Is it really efficient to have emojis and stuff like that as an emoji module in every piece of software? How stupid is that? Why don't I just have one for everything? Now mind you a lot of the other features that ST Doesn't have by default the reason you patch some things into it for example ST does not have a scroll up abilities by default You might think of that as being a basic feature to terminals and in most terminals it is and if you want it in ST There's a you just download ST and you apply the patch for it But the reason ST doesn't have that is because the thinking is That that and a lot of use cases is totally redundant if you're talking about people who use Tmux or something like that Because T met Tmux has its own built-in a way for doing that. So that is the mindset It's not suckless is in particular is about two things. It's about well-written code efficient and well-written code And it's also about just only having the features that you need in the best situations. Okay Now additionally to that one final note, especially about suckless stuff is that it is infinitely easier to add features to suckless software than it is For anything else one thing that I added you might remember if you've been watching my channel for a while Last year I added the feature. Let's say I have some output on my terminal I added the feature with the help of a subscriber where I can just have a key that says okay Select which command you want and once you do that it will copy that output to your clipboard So if I go in another, you know, let's say I open up Vim or some in Vim in Vim Let's say I open up Vim. I can paste in the output of that command Okay So a lot of things that you might take for granted as not being automatic on other terminals It's easy using a minimalist piece of software an Extensible minimalist piece of software you can easily add in features. I didn't know nothing about You know copying output from the terminal or something like that, but we sat down and did it in an evening Okay, it's not that hard and that is the mindset. So When you're saying something like that this guy Christian or anyone else if you're a normie out there You like using Windows Mac. That's fine. You think it's easy. Okay, but if you're the kind of person Who is computer oriented? I don't know why people say this kind of stuff like it Using software like this is not like a big joke that people do for no reason It's something that you can get a lot of bang for your buck out of and I encourage you to try it And don't just think it's stupid because you don't understand it. Okay, I mean you don't understand because you're dumb or something That's not what I'm saying. Just lurk more and just play around with it and don't don't knock it till you've tried it That's all I gotta say. All right. See you guys next