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KISS

KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid!; also KISR, keep it simple ,retard) is a minimalist design philosophy that favors simplicity, both internal and external, technology that is as simple as possible to achieve given task. This philosophy doesn't primarily stem from laziness or a desire to rush something (though these are completely 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 and failure, more dependencies etc.

WATCH OUT: many have started to ride on the wave of the "KISS" trend and abuse the term, twisting its true meaning; for example GNU/Linux Mint has started to market itself as "KISS" -- that's of course ridiculous and all Mint developers are cretins and idiots. Maximum INTERNAL simplicity is a necessary prerequisite for the KISS philosophy, anything that's just simple on the outside is a mere harmful pseudominimalism -- you may as well use a Mac.

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.
Using solar panels directly, without a battery, if it's good enough.
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 flat 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.
Using ASCII art instead of bitmap images.
In the world of coffee so called Turkish coffee without any milk and sugar is probably the most KISS option, you just put coffee ground in a mug and pour hot water on it. Compare this to Espresso with milk and sugar which needs a quite complex and expensive machine. { Yeah, I drink the most KISS coffee, though sometimes I also use French press -- that one is still quite simple. ~drummyfish }
...

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.

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KISS

See Also