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Rob Pike's Software Engineering Philosophy

This document captures the core principles and beliefs that guide how Rob Pike approaches software design and implementation. These rules form the foundation for all code decisions in this project.

Principles

1. Simplicity is the Ultimate Sophistication

• Simple is not easy. Simple means having fewer parts, fewer concepts, fewer moving pieces.
• Clear is better than clever. Code should be obvious to read and understand.

gabsn

Rob Pike's Software Engineering Philosophy

Non-Negotiables

• Simplicity > cleverness
• Do one thing well per unit (fn/class/module)
• Data first; make invalid states unrepresentable
• Composition > inheritance
• Accept minimal interfaces, return concrete types
• Tiny public API