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KISS

See also minimalism.

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: various scum has 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 connected 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.
Using pen and paper to take notes instead of a phone.
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 (or something like ISO 8859-1) instead of Unicode, it is good enough.
Using a plain text flat file instead of a database system.
In programming simply using identifier prefixes instead of namespaces which require another feature to be added to the language. This is done e.g. by SDL -- all functions from the library start with SDL, which prevents collisions with user identifiers.
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.
Beatboxing to produce a back track for rap songs, as opposed to using (or even paying for) some kind of music software.
Using hammock instead of bed -- it is much simpler, cheaper, portable and has an extra swinging feature for which it is considered by many to even be superior in terms of comfort.
The Elo rating system is considered KISS in the context of other rating systems such as Glicko. While there are many systems objectively more accurate than Elo, Elo remains the most widely used one probably thanks to its simplicity.
Infrared wireless communication in old phones was way more KISS than Bluetooth and wifi.
A word-for-word text translator can be a super KISS, good enough alternative to "AI" translators, especially considering that with Unix tools the code can probably be implemented with a few lines of shell script (make a plain text dictionary file with "phrase regular expression":"translation" pairs, each on its own line, ordered from longest to shortest, then translate any text simply by apply sed replacement on it for each line of the dictionary file).
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 -- this could perhaps be considered a runner up. ~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