107 lines
4.9 KiB
Markdown
107 lines
4.9 KiB
Markdown
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As you guys may know, I am a huge fan of suckless software such as dwm, st
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and dmenu, not to mention the suckless philosophy. But with that said, I have
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never agreed with suckless on everything, and some parts of their philosophy
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is very frustrating.
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## systemd
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suckless has a page dedicated to software that
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[sucks](https://suckless.org/sucks) but more importantly a section dedicated
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to [systemd](https://suckless.org/sucks/systemd). Problem is, most of the
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information on this page is either out of date, not relevant, not an actual
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problem or simply a bug that was patched YEARS ago.
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It is completely fine to dislike systemd, but have a valid reason for it,
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such as simply preferring another init system or the resource usage
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or something. I personally use Gentoo with systemd because while systemd
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isn't an init system (it's a lot more than that), I find that it does
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everything I need an init system to do, with a great logger on top of
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that. The full package provides an awesome experience for me personally.
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## sucks
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Generally their sucks page does list out some programs that I don't really
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like, such as texinfo, subversion and cmake. But I think saying programs
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suck simply because it's written in C++ is ridiculous, and this is where
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I disagree with suckless.
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suckless doesn't like C++ very much, and they definitely show it. I
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really like C++ though, and I don't think I'm actually going to write
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much C when I can use C++ instead. I may get into why I prefer C++ in
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the future, but disliking a program because it's not written in C is
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stupid, provided the language is fast enough to do the job well.
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## Their codebase
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A lot of new users talk about the awful suckless codebase, and I think
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this is totally fair. The reason dwm is considered "hard" is not because
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C is hard, it's because you don't document your codebase at all and use
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variable names that only the people who wrote the code can actually
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comprehend without spending a very long time learning the codebase.
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We're fortunate enough to be blessed with
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[dwm-commented](https://github.com/bakkeby/dwm-commented) but what about
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the other suckless software? How will you ever learn the codebase inside
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out?
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Can you guys tell me what `showhide()` means? What about `recttomon`?
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`r`? `lrpad`? `da`? `dl`? Unless you are familiar with the dwm codebase
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and Xlib functions and types, of course not. This is exactly why
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new users find dwm and st intimidating. The C language isn't hard,
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but your codebase is not documented (and you have refused to do)
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which isn't terrible, but the variable names mean absolutely nothing
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and there is no cheatsheet or anything, which is very bad when you're
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a community focused on users writing their own patches and contributing
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them to the wiki.
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I am quite familiar with the dwm codebase I'd say, but I stepped away
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from it for a few months to work on personal projects. As soon as I
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went back I ended up forgetting what most functions and variables
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do as well as where they're actually set and called from.
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suckless is focused on clean, readable, well written code but while
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their code is relatively clean, it's anything but readable, and in
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my opinion such code cannot be called well written either.
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In general, suckless software also tends to prioritize less code
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over efficiency and speed. I have to disagree on this as well,
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and I would much rather have 10k lines of fast code than 2k lines
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of slower code.
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This is just personal opinion though, but why do they feel
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it's necessary to place a line break after the type name
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(such as `int` or `void`) and then ANOTHER line break before
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the opening bracket. This just leads to less compact code,
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which seems like it would contradict their goal of well written
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code.
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## Documentation
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Many people seem to complain about the lack of documentation
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for suckless software. I don't think this is completely justified,
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because most if not all suckless software comes with a man page,
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but when you actually want to hack on the dwm codebase, you
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are totally screwed.
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If you are completely new to C like I was when I got started
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with suckless software, you're going to hate your life and
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constantly complain about how awful C is when really suckless
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just can't document their code. So people complaining about
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the documentation most likely just want better documented
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code, but naturally suckless being suckless they consider
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documentation "bloat" which is a shame.
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## Conclusion
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Will I stop using suckless software? No. Do I agree with the
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suckless philosophy? Yes, to a certain degree. Software bloat
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is a real problem, and it does need to be solved. But if you
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want to actually avoid software bloat, at least write well
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documented software yourself.
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While the suckless community has in general been quite nice,
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suckless themselves most likely secretly wants an elitist
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community. This is a fair belief to have, but I think they
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take it a bit too far.
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With all of this said, I will write software in C++, I will
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use systemd and Gentoo. Have a good day!
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