@tjhexf @kasdeya honestly most "diy DE" software (like the tools you'd use in combination with a window manager like sway/i3, bspwm, xmodad, etc) feels like that middle ground pretty well

simple config files, but files, not recompiling
just enough features to be extensible, but not too much to be bloated
does it's job well in your ecosystem

by that i mean tools like rofi, dunst, polybar/waybar, terminals like foot, alacritty, etc

@navi @kasdeya @tjhexf XMonad config is a haskell program though, where xmonad works like a very high-level library with pre-configured values to make a window manager.
But UX-wise… it's nearly undistinguishable from a very powerful config, a bit like how many Unix programs use scripts for configuration.

While for suckless… I'd effectively say it's software driven by some opinion/ideal rather than practicalities, which you'd typically get from "itch-scratching-driven development".
And I often feel like most ideals of suckless would work better if it where in a actual OS like Plan9 where you can actually move things around to simplify either the software or the workflow, without just disregarding the actual needs.

@lanodan @kasdeya @tjhexf i find it funny how suckless' called wayland bad on the mailing list because they moved rendering/compositing into "the window manager"

that argument only holds if you're implementing everything yourself, because if you take a look at it as a whole, x11 + dwm is a lot more complex than any wlroots compositor, just by the sheer fact of the massive mess of bloat and complexity that x11 is

but i guess for them using a library to offload the complexity on your app is bad...?