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Comment by nightcracker | Hacker News Reader

It is still bizarre because not every user wants to and/or doesn't have the skills to do that.

What lisaberlin wrote applies - suckless is like Unix: user friendly, just very selective about who it decides to make friends with.

But in this case, I would disagree. The file is quite readable (way more than most text config files I've seen), and the single command to compile is even included in the README. If you're the kind of person that purposefully downloads a new terminal, rather than using the built-in one, you can probably configure st just fine.

Seems like kind of a pretentious choice... they've structured their program so the config file is a .h file just so you can feel cool when you compile it to change font size?

I suspect it's not so you feel cool, but because it means the program doesn't need a parser for config files, and because it's more flexible.

parserless configuration is easily achieved with stuff like envdir: https://cr.yp.to/daemontools/envdir.html

That just parses environment variables, instead of files.

Not to mention that it's yet another dependency, which is another thing that's avoided by doing configuration through a header file.

> suckless is like Unix: user friendly, just very selective about who it decides to make friends with

I like to use the term "super-user friendly", as a compliment.

Yes, and that's perfectly ok. These people simply aren't the target audience, just like you wouldn't recommend Arch to a Linux beginner.

Exactly. I would never use it, but I'm perfectly alright having something targeting a niche perfectly. It's better than trying to please everybody and ending up being "meh".

Not having the skills isn't the thing that should stop someone in either scenario, it's not wanting the skills. Arch is great for a beginner that wants to know how to set up their own bootloader and similar things, you can use Ubuntu for years without gaining that knowledge. Or how much C editing and compiling does the average Unix user happen to run into?

There's very little natural progression in computer use, people do things the way they know how until they decide to learn more. Think of how many time's you've seen some family member slowly select file-save without ever figuring out ctrl-s.

if you don't like it than fork it

I find in hard to fork human behavior and have anything one might consider a good adoption rate.

Agreed in general. (As a small counterpoint: I helped a beginner get familiar with Linux. We tried Ubuntu first, and she hated it. She switched to Arch and has been happy ever since.)

The Xmonad window manager is configured by editing its source code as well, and believe me, you don't have to know Haskell to do it. They pushed the DSL approach to a point where the main function reads like a configuration file, whose format can be learned just by looking at it.

this is not entirely true, xmonad's config file happens to be a haskell file, but I don't need to recompile the whole xmonad project if I want to change it, I just start xmonad again.

It does some tricks to do this (mainly the _main_ xmonad executable compiles a custom binary for you taking the xmonad.hs as input), but it's a different case.

http://xmonad.org/xmonad-docs/xmonad-contrib/XMonad-Doc-Conf...

If this experience has been improved, I might try xmonad again. I used it for 2.5 years but switched to i3 in 2013 after finding myself in cabal hell for the umpteenth time. Recompiling GHC to make my window manager work was not my idea of a good time.

I switched from xmonad to another window manager and eventually to i3 many years ago, and there's no way I'm going back.

Yes, you can do simple stuff in xmonad without knowing Haskell. But for more complicated stuff, you have to either copy and paste code that you don't understand, or ask someone who knows Haskell to write it for you. And there's no way you're going to be able to do troubleshoot non-obvious problems without either knowing Haskell or once again asking someone who knows Haskell to do it for you. That's way too much of a pain in the ass.

Configuring and troubleshooting i3 doesn't require knowing Haskell, is really simple, flexible enough for what I need, and any advanced functionality I want it to perform I can program in my own language of choice.

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