The Appeal of Low/No Config Software
Pulling myself from config Hell and focusing on what's important with low/no config software.
In the last week or so, we've seen the public release of Ghostty, a terminal emulator as well as Helix 25.01, a text-editor that's really starting to gain traction. These are two complementary pieces of software but the real link between the two is the philosophy of working out-of-the-box with minimal configuration required.
That may sound odd, all software should work out of the box right? Well yes, but these types of applications tend to have a following of users who prefer to customize the application to a very personal level.
For example, Helix is competing with Neovim which prides itself on extensibility, add as many plugins as you'd like, even use whatever plugin manager you prefer, it's up to you.
The difference in approach from Ghostty and Helix is most, if not all necessary configuration is in place by default. Helix doesn't even have a plugin manager, yet.
So what's the appeal? Like many, I've spent way too much time on Neovim configurations, even my current terminal emulator, iTerm2, has had hours put into a configuration to work in tandem with my ZSH setup I'm satisfied with. At this stage, I just want something that works from the get go, I'll have the option of setting up my own configurations, but as soon as I install that software, it should be usable to a high degree.
I think it comes down to fatigue, I'm sick of managing plugins and adding configurations. I used to love this process, but not anymore. In fairness, I'd only do sizeable configuration overhauls twice or three times a year max but I've little interest in doing so again. Even with all of my configs being in a repo.
It's refreshing to see the creators of these applications push this approach of low/no configuration necessary and I'm pretty confident it'll catch on with more users deciding to take this path also.
People may still prefer the highly customizable approach, which I get. For me, I'm stepping away from config Hell for a while and hope that minimal approach is both attractive, and can be appreciated by others.
Happy New Year, don't forget to update your footer.