"Why are you so set on using minimal programs? Just use these tools you don't understand, can't easily contact the head dev, and/or can't easily modify yourself! It will be so much easier!"
And I'm guessing you let unsupervised guests you don't know sleep in your bed when you're not using it too, right? You seem to be okay with random strangers doing things with/in your tools, so I'm guessing that goes for all your tools right? Spare room in the house too right? Kitchen? Bathroom? Clothes?
@caseyp Tbh once you're using a browser and an operating system, that's down the drain anyways.
Usually, the bloaty programs (say eclipse) are not the ones that are hard to understand.
@abs I mean. Links/w3m aren't crazy difficult... And its simply my own ineptitude that prevents me from making the fullest of the linux kernel (but I am working on that). X, Linux, and the core of Emacs are really all I have left, everything else in the "stack" I feel comfortable with. To be fair, those 3 are immense, but I'm widdlin' down 2 (screw X)
@caseyp To me, the most mysterious is everything that does rendering: Firefox, mpv, LaTeX and zathura.
Also the kernel itself. While I did attend a systems architecture class, that's not nearly enough to understand what's going on in there.
I also do a lot of Coq at university and at this point, not even the current developers fully understand what it's doing.
Overall, I've given up on detailed understanding of my tools. Mainly because I don't really care about systems programming.
@abs
Indeed. It just goes to distinguish the pieces. For me the computer itself is the tool, while you see the top level pieces as the tools. I am good friends with some useless academic proof wankers like yourself ;) at my university... It's all good, but I don't appreciate the-- hm. Exasperated elitism? Of people who simply view the tool differently. If you want to give the chef your knife to cook you stuff, that's fine. But I want to cook my own damn food with my own damn knife!
@caseyp yes to all of the above